Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T20:14:16.531Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Distress or Illness? a Study of Psychological Symptoms after Myocardial Infarction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

G. G. Lloyd  and
R. H. Cawley
G. G. Lloyd
Affiliation:
Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh; previously Lecturer, Institute of Psychiatry and King's College Hospital Medical School, London S.E.5
R. H. Cawley
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry and King's College Hospital Medical School, London S.E.5
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

Three groups of patients were identified during a study of men who had recently suffered an acute myocardial infarction: those with psychiatric morbidity antedating the infarction, those with psychiatric morbidity immediately following the infarction and those with no significant psychopathology. Compared to the other two groups, patients with psychiatric morbidity before the infarction were more likely to be unmarried, unemployed and to have received previous psychiatric treatment. They also obtained higher scores for neuroticism and psychoticism on personality assessment. Patients whose symptoms have been precipitated by the infarction resembled the psychologically healthy group with regard to their demographic characteristics and personality. Their symptoms tended to be transient, improving without special psychiatric treatment.

Type
Papers
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 142 , Issue 2 , February 1983 , pp. 120 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Cay, E. L., Vetter, N., Philip, A. E. & Dugard, P. (1972) Psychological status during recovery from an acute heart attack. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 16, 425–35.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Culpan, R. H., Davies, B. M. & Oppenheim, A. N. (1960) Incidence of psychiatric illness among hospital outpatients: an application of the Cornell Medical Index. British Medical Journal, i, 855–7.Google Scholar
Eastwood, M. R. (1975) The Relation Between Mental and Physical Illness. Toronto: Toronto University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eysenck, H. J. & Eysenck, S. B. G. (1975) Manual of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. London: Hodder and Stoughton.Google Scholar
Goldberg, D. P. & Blackwell, B. (1970) Psychiatric illness in general practice: a detailed study using a new method of case identification. British Medical Journal, 2, 439–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, D. P., Cooper, B., Eastwood, M. R., Kedward, H. B. & Shepherd, M. (1970) A standardized interview for use in community surveys. British Journal of Preventive and Social Medicine, 24, 18–24.Google ScholarPubMed
Gurland, B. J., Yorkston, N. J., Stone, A. R., Frank, J. D. & Fleiss, J. K. (1972) The Structured and Scaled Interview to Assess Maladjustment (SSIAM) I Description, rationale and development. Archives of General Psychiatry, 27, 259–64.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hackett, T. P., Cassem, N. H. & Wishnie, H. A. (1968) The coronary care unit: an appraisal of its psychologic hazards. New England Journal of Medicine, 279, 1365–70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lipowski, Z. J. (1967) Review of consultation psychiatry & psychosomatic medicine. II. Clinical aspects. Psychosomatic Medicine, 29, 201–24.Google ScholarPubMed
Lloyd, G. G. (1981) Psychological reactions to physical illness. In Practical Psychiatry (Edited by S. Crown) London: Northwood pp 227–31.Google Scholar
Lloyd, G. G. & Cawley, R. H. (1978) Psychiatric morbidity in men one week after acute myocardial infarction. British Medical Journal, 2, 1453–4.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lloyd, G. G. & Cawley, R. H. (1982) Psychiatric morbidity after myocardial infarction. Quarterly Journal of Medicine, 51, 33–42.Google ScholarPubMed
Maguire, G. P., Julier, D. L., Hawton, K. E. & Bancroft, J. H. J. (1974) Psychiatric referral and morbidity on two general medical wards. British Medical Journal, i, 268–70.Google Scholar
Norms, R. M., Brandt, P. W. T., Caughey, D. E., Lee, A. J. & Scott, P. J. (1969) A new coronary prognostic index Lancet, i, 274–8.Google Scholar
Stern, M. J., Pascale, L. & McLoone, J. B. (1976) Psychosocial adaptation following an acute myocardial infarction. Journal of Chronic Diseases, 29, 513–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Strain, J. J. (1981) Diagnostic considerations in the medical setting. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 4, 287–300.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tennant, C., Bebbington, P. & Hurry, J. (1981) The short-term outcome of neurotic disorders in the community: the relation of remission to clinical factors and “neutralising” life events. British Journal of Psychiatry, 139, 213–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verwoerdt, A. & Dovenmuehle, R. H. (1964) Heart disease and depression. Geriatrics, 19, 856–64.Google ScholarPubMed
White, P. D. (1951) The psyche and the soma: the spiritual and physical attributes of the heart. Annals of Internal Medicine, 35, 1291–1305.Google ScholarPubMed
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.