Poor mental health is strongly linked with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in young and middle-aged adults, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.[1]
The analysis looked at data from more than 500,000 people between the ages of 18 and 49. In addition to disclosing whether they had ever been diagnosed with depression, the participants also self-reported the number of days in a month that they experienced poor mental health.
After adjusting for sociodemographic and cardiovascular risk factors, researchers found that people dealing with depression—which accounted for 19.6% of all respondents—were 2.3 times more likely to experience CVD.
Also, regardless of whether they had received a formal diagnosis, participants who self-reported one to 13 days of poor mental health in a month were nearly 1.5 times more likely to experience CVD—including heart attack, chest pain, or stroke—than those who reported zero days of poor mental health. Those who reported 14 or more days of poor mental health were 2.3 times more likely to experience CVD.
“When you’re stressed, anxious, or depressed, you may feel overwhelmed, and your heart rate and blood pressure rises. 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,” senior author Garima Sharma, MBBS, associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine, said in a statement about the study.
Even among people who did not experience any major cardiovascular events, there were strong associations between poor mental health and poor heart health. The study looked at seven major cardiovascular risk factors: hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, overweight/obesity, smoking, diabetes, physical inactivity, and inadequate fruit and vegetable intake. Those who had depression were nearly 1.8 times as likely to display two or more of these risk factors.
The study also examined whether people in urban versus rural areas would show differences in cardiovascular disease or cardiovascular health risk, but did not find any significant differences.
Read the full study here.