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Heart Disease and Emotions: Anger, Anxiety, Depression

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Definition

The negative emotions of anger, anxiety, and depression exist in several different forms – stable individual differences in negative emotionality (i.e., personality traits), brief emotional episodes, symptoms of emotional distress, and emotional disorders. Each of these emotion constructs has been examined as an influence on the development and course of coronary heart disease, a common cause of death resulting from the progression of atherosclerosis in the arteries that otherwise supply blood to the myocardium.

Description

Negative emotions have been suggested as an influence on the development and course of coronary heart disease (CHD) for centuries since the earliest descriptions of this common and costly medical condition. CHD begins as early as childhood or adolescence, with the development of fatty streaks within the walls of the coronary arteries. Over decades, these progress to more substantial coronary artery lesions, with the buildup of lipids and inflammatory...

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Correspondence to Timothy W. Smith .

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© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media, New York

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Smith, T.W. (2013). Heart Disease and Emotions: Anger, Anxiety, Depression. In: Gellman, M.D., Turner, J.R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1005-9_1614

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1005-9_1614

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-1004-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-1005-9

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