Prioritize Mental Health to Lower the Risk of Heart Disease

Feeling sad affects not just your emotions but also your heart. According to a new study, young adults with poor mental health have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

Highlights:

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in adults worldwide
People who reported feeling depressed for multiple days were more likely to have cardiovascular disease and poor heart health
Therefore, there is a need to prioritize screening and monitoring for heart disease in those with mental health disorders, as well as vice versa, to improve overall heart health

Young adults who feel sad or depressed are more likely to develop cardiovascular disease (CVD) and have poor heart health, according to a new study. The findings add to a growing body of research linking CVD and depression in young and middle-aged individuals, implying that the link may begin in early adulthood.

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‘Young adults who are sad or have poor mental health have an increased risk of heart attacks, strokes, and other heart disease risk factors.’

Depression Increases the Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke

The study, which was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, also discovered that young adults who self-reported feeling depressed or having bad mental health days had higher rates of heart attacks, strokes, and risk factors for heart disease than their peers who did not have mental health issues.

“When you’re stressed, anxious or depressed, you may feel overwhelmed, and your heart rate and blood pressure rise. It’s also common that feeling down could lead to making poor lifestyle choices like smoking, drinking alcohol, sleeping less and not being physically active - all adverse conditions that negatively impact your heart,” says Garima Sharma, M.B.B.S., associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine and senior author of the study.

Sharma and her colleagues examined data from 593,616 persons who took part in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a self-reported, nationally representative study that took place between 2017 and 2020. The poll asked if they had ever been told they had a depressive condition, how many days they had poor mental health in the previous month (0 days, 1-13 days, or 14-30 days) if they had had a heart attack, stroke, or chest discomfort, and if they had cardiovascular disease risk factors.

High blood pressure, high cholesterol, being overweight/obese, smoking, diabetes, and a lack of physical activity and diet are all risk factors. People with two or more of these risk factors were thought to have poor cardiovascular health.

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Depression Rate During the COVID-19 Pandemic

One in every five persons reported having depression or feeling down regularly, with the study noting that rates could have been greater during the last year of the survey, which was the first year of the COVID-19 epidemic. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of U.S. adults who experienced depression or anxiety increased from 36.4% to 41.5% during the first year of the pandemic, with persons aged 18 to 29 experiencing the greatest increase.

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Link Between Depression and Heart Disease- Two Way Street

The study discovered that those who self-reported feeling depressed for multiple days had a stronger relationship to cardiovascular disease and poor heart health. Participants who reported up to 13 bad mental health days in the previous 30 days had 1.5 times the risks of CVD as those who reported no poor mental health days, while those who reported 14 or more days of poor mental health had double the odds. The associations between poor mental health and CVD were not significantly different by gender or urban/rural status.

“The relationship between depression and heart disease is a two-way street. Depression increases your risk of heart issues, and those with heart disease experience depression,” says Yaa Adoma Kwapong, M.D., M.P.H., a postdoctoral research fellow at Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease and lead author of the study. “Our study suggests that we need to prioritize mental health among young adults and perhaps increase screening and monitoring for heart disease in people with mental health conditions and vice versa to improve overall heart health.”

According to Kwapong, this new study merely gives a glimpse of cardiovascular health among young people suffering from depression, and that future research should focus on how depression affects cardiovascular health over time.

Source-Medindia

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