Depression and heart attacks

New research suggests that depression nearly triples the risk of death following a heart attack. The U.S. study showed that among 360 depressed post-heart-attack patients followed for more than six years those who did not recover from their depression in the first six months were more than twice as likely to die. Depression has increasingly been recognized to increase the risk for cardiovascular disease ; possible reasons for this association include sticky platelets, a condition depressed people are likely to have, or autonomic nervous activity, which increase heart irritability.

You can find out more about this research at

http://psychcentral.com/news/2007/12/10/depression-can-be-deadly-for-cardiac-survivors/1635.html