Doctors do not officially state what is the source of the growing number of cases of depression in people who left the hospital after a heart attack. The average healthy person is often unaware of the patients’ fear of having another heart attack, thinking that a full and hungry person will not understand.Depending on scientific studies, we learn that depression occurs in 20-40 percent of patients after a heart attack. People living after unpleasant experiences in fear for their own lives are accompanied by a bad mood, which sometimes grows to depression. Nutrition and physical activity affect mental condition. Scientists even point to walking, swimming and cycling as the appropriate type of activity for people who survived a heart attack. We should immediately contact a doctor if we have observed symptoms of depression after a heart attack, as it is a serious cause of death during post-infarction treatment.
Conclusions from research in Lithuania
The problem of depression, concerns as many as 1/4 of patients after a heart attack, the risk of its occurrence is higher in the fairer sex. The data was collected on a group of 160 convalescents. Research has highlighted the link between depression and cardiovascular disease. You should be aware that not only mental disorders lead to this type of illness, but also, as Lithuanian tests have shown, prevent you from regaining full health.
How to recognize depression?
Seek help if you or someone else has symptoms after a heart attack.
- Decrease in mood – a person suffering from depression is depressed compared to the condition before the heart attack. He becomes indifferent to activities, things and people that used to bring him joy.
- Sleep disturbances – you have trouble falling asleep or sleep interruptions that make it hard to get back to sleep.
- Lack of enthusiasm – you will meet with apathy, lack of initiative to do anything, general discouragement.
- Masks of depression – manifest themselves not in mental functioning, but in ailments involving the body. These include joint pain, headache or abdominal pain, insomnia.
- Neglect – home and professional duties have become irrelevant, the sick person finds it more difficult to take care of them than in the old days.
- Changes noticed by loved ones – sudden withdrawal from social life, loneliness, sadness and taciturnity that did not take place before.
person after affected by depression are six times more likely to die in the first six months after a heart attack than those who do not. If we observe disturbing symptoms in ourselves or another person, we must persuade them to undergo therapy. Otherwise, it will have less chance of recovery, especially in the first year after a heart attack, which plays a decisive role.