Mental Disorders and Personal Psychological Characteristics in Patients with Cardiovascular Diseases
Background. Today the prevalence of mental disorders have grown significantly, so it is urgent to diagnose and correct them as early as possible. Mental disorders in patients with cardiovascular diseases aggravate the course and outcomes of the underlying disease, which necessitates their investigation in clinical practice.Aim: to study the frequency and phenomenology of mental disorders in patients with cardiovascular diseases.Materials and methods. Sixty patients of the Cardiology Department of St. Petersburg Multidisciplinary Hospital became the objects of the study, and comprised 2 groups. The first group included 30 patients with cardiovascular diseases, such as coronary artery disease and hypertension I–III stages, among them 10 men and 20 women aged 43.1 ± 11.7 years. The second group consisted of 30 patients with chronic heart failure in stabilization period (mean age 65.6 ± 10.8 years). The study included clinical and scale assessment.Results. We found that in patients with cardiovascular diseases mild disorders of affective spectrum prevail, with a typical comorbidity of anxiety and depression. Mental disorders and personal features in patients with chronic heart failure are different from those in patients with uncomplicated cardiovascular conditions. Mental disorders are detected in cardiological practice only in one third of patients, which reveals the problem of training internists, who could diagnose the most common mental disorders.Conclusions. Complex clinical and scale assessment in combination with the results of patients’ self-assessment showed a significant prevalence of affective disorders in the patients with cardiovascular diseases, who underwent treatment in the Cardiology Department of St. Petersburg Multidisciplinary Hospital. The results demonstrate that cardiac pa tients have personal risk factors for mental disorders development, predominantly anxiety and depressive disorders of neurotic level, both nosogenic and non-nosogenic, which requires a comprehensive psychological, psychotherapeutic and psychiatric care for these patients.