A longitudinal study on coping and emotional well-being in cardiac patients.

Emotions and coping play a role in the prognosis of cardiac patients. This two-wave longitudinal study aims to analyze the ability of adaptive and maladaptive coping to predict the emotional well-being of cardiac patients after controlling for their functional physical capacity. Emotional well-being (positive and negative affect), coping strategies, and functional physical capacity were evaluated both at Time 1 (n = 253) and at Time 2 (n = 186), 8 weeks later.

Benefit Finding in Cardiac Patients: Relationships with Emotional Well-Being and Resources after Controlling for Physical Functional Impairment.

Benefit finding (BF) is defined as the individual's perception of positive change as a result of coping with an adverse life event. The beneficial effects of BF on well-being could be because BF favors the improvement of resources like self-efficacy, social support and effective coping. The main objective of this longitudinal 8 week study was to explore, in a sample of cardiac patients (n = 51), the combined contribution of BF and these resources to the positive affect.

A Randomised Trial of a Positive Intervention to Promote Well-Being in Cardiac Patients.

Background: Negative emotions are linked to the onset and development of coronary heart diseases (CHD), whereas positive emotions are associated with better health and lower mortality rates among patients with these diseases. The objective of this randomised trial was to improve cardiac patients' emotional states using a Programme to Improve Well-being (PIW) based exclusively on positive interventions (those that promote intentional behaviours and thoughts to improve well-being).

Methods: Cardiac patients (n = 108) were randomly assigned to two parallel groups.

Effect of negative attributions on depressive symptoms of patients with coronary heart disease after controlling for physical functional impairment.

Objectives: Negative attributional style (NAS), or tendency to explain negative events through internal, stable, and global causes, has proved to be an important predictor of depressive symptoms and poor health, including coronary heart disease (CHD). The goal of this two-wave longitudinal study was to look at whether depressive symptoms are caused by or are a consequence of this style in a sample of patients with CHD while controlling for the effect of physical functional impairment on the development of these symptoms.

Methods: Ninety-one patients, who had just suffered a first cardiac episode, were evaluated on NAS, depressive symptoms and functional capacity (measured in metabolic equivalent levels or METs) both on the first and on last day of an 8-week cardiac rehabilitation programme.

Pessimistic attributions and coping strategies as predictors of depressive symptoms in people with coronary heart disease.

This two-wave longitudinal study examines the ability of pessimistic attributional style and coping strategies to predict depressive symptoms in a sample of 99 patients with coronary heart disease (CHD). After the cardiac episode, the globality dimension of this style was associated with increased depressive symptoms, and this association was mediated by the low use of effective coping strategies. Stability and globality dimensions of pessimistic attributional style could also predict depressive symptoms eight weeks later.