Myocardial infarction - Emotional consequences for the wife

In this paper, anxiety and depression in 37 wives of myocardial infarction (MI) patients were assessed by interviews one week after the hospital admission, three months and 10 years after the index MI. The findings indicate high prevalence of anxiety during both the acute phase and after three months. However, during the long-term follow-up their anxiety decreased. The proportion of women with severe depression was relatively stable during the whole course. A K-mean cluster analysis identified four subgroups with different patterns of anxiety and depression. The findings indicate that pre-MI use of health services, quality of marital relationship, perceived social support and coping styles during the acute illness phase are significant predictors of emotional reactions in the sample.