The impact of negative emotions on prognosis following myocardial infarction: is it more than depression?

This study examine the importance of major depression symptoms, history of major depression, anxiety, anger-in, anger-out, and perceived social support, measured in the hospital after a myocardial infarction (MI), in predicting cardiac events over the subsequent 12 months in a sample of 222 patients. Cardiac events included both recurrences of acute coronary syndromes (unstable angina admissions and survived and nonsurvived MI recurrences) and probable arrhythmic events (survived cardiac arrests and arrhythmic deaths). Major depression, depressive symptoms, anxiety, and history of major depression all significantly predicted cardiac events. Multivariate analyses showed that depressive symptoms, anxiety, and history of major depression each had an impact independent of each other, as well as of measures of cardiac disease severity.