Psychological Factors and Cardiovascular Disorders: The Role of Stress and Psychosocial Influences

Psychological factors significantly affect the cardiovascular system and play an important role in the etiopathogenesis of cardiovascular disorders. For the past several decades attention to the psychosocial and behavioral factors in cardiovascular disease has increased significantly. Multiple lines of evidence suggest that psychosocial factors contribute significantly to coronary heart disease as evidenced by data relating risk to depression, anxiety, personality factors and character traits, social isolation, and chronic life stress. When psychosocial stresses tend to cluster together, risk for cardiac events is often substantially elevated, equaling or exceeding that associated with standard biomedical risk factors for coronary disease such as hypertension and hypercholesterolemia. Understanding the integration of the interactions among multiple psychological and biological factors in the regulation of the cardiovascular system and the development of cardiovascular disorders is an important challenge for future research. This book will contribute to this goal. The contributors to this book are the leading international experts in the field of the relation between psychological processes and cardiovascular disorders. This book will be of interest to physicians, psychologists, mental health counselors, other clinicians, medical and psychology students, medical residents, and the general public.