Type A personality and coronary artery disease

Abstract

Cardiovascular diseases are well known to be associated with several psychiatric illnesses. Most of the related psychological problems were type A personality, stress related problems, anxiety, and depressive illnesses. The dimensions of the associations are various from risk factor to triggering factor. With recent advances in the understanding of the mechanisms of heart attacks, the pathogenesis model by type A personality or depression might be associated with both longstanding atherogenic components or risk factors and decisive momentum to trigger the heart attack. Accordingly, in addition to the management of the unhealthy behavior related to the type A personality, intervention for the acute psychologic crisis might be equally important. Moreover, the association between the type A personality and cardiovascular diseases is observed in the primary prevention as well as secondary prevention studies. Due to the nature of the associated psychological problems, the background of the social environments seems to be deeply involved in the associations. The understanding of the complexity of the association is the key to further studies.