Prevalence of Depression in MI Patients

Depression is a common disorder and WHO has ranked fourth on the list of the most urgent health problems worldwide. Severity of disability resulted from depression is comparable with 8 major chronic disorders. The impact of depressive disorders on poor outcome of coronary artery disease appears equal or exceed than other well-known cardiovascular risk factors Our purpose was to ascertain prevalence of depressive disorders in post MI patients because of the important practical implication. This study was cross-sectional and included 234 post MI patients who were admitted since 20/2/2001 to 21/5/2001 in Heshmat Hospital in Rasht. Patients were requested to fill a questionnaire, if patient's score was more than 10, types of depression were evaluated with DSM-IV clinically. With consideration of other factors such as sex, age, occupation, residence, educational and marital status data were analysed with spss software and chi2 test . From 234 patients who filled this questionnaire, 137 (56.5%) were male and 97(41.5%) were female, 123(52.6%) had one type of depressive disorders that major depression was the most common (n=51,21.8%), followed by, dysrhythmia, minor depression and recurrent brief depressive disorder, respectively. Also, sex,age, residence and marital status were not significantly related to depression, but there was relation between occupation and educational status with depression (p< 0.05 ). We found that depression was common in post MI patients and require to be diagnosed and managed as soon as possible.