Depression and the Heart

"For decades, we've divided health into neat categories: mental health on one side, physical health on the other. The brain over here. The heart over there. Different specialists. Different appointments. Different silos. But biology doesn't respect those boundaries-and neither does depression. A growing body of research now makes something unmistakably clear: Depression is not only a disorder of mood and motivation; it is also a condition that affects the heart, blood vessels, and our long-term cardiovascular risk."

"Importantly, this association isn't limited to major depressive disorder. Even subclinical depressive symptoms such as low mood, fatigue, and anhedonia (reduced interest in activities that were once enjoyable) have been linked to higher cardiovascular risk. For clinicians, that's a crucial point: Patients don't need to meet full diagnostic criteria for depression to experience real physiological consequences. The relationship also works in the opposite direction: After a heart attack or stroke, rates of depression rise sharply-and patients with depression after a cardiac event have worse outcomes, including higher mortality and higher rates of recurrent events."

Depression significantly increases risk for coronary artery disease, heart attack, stroke, and heart failure, and this elevated risk persists after accounting for traditional risk factors like smoking, hypertension, diabetes, and obesity. Subclinical depressive symptoms such as low mood, fatigue, and anhedonia also correlate with higher cardiovascular risk. Depression commonly follows cardiac events, and post-event depression associates with greater mortality and recurrent events. The relationship between mood disorders and cardiovascular disease is bidirectional and biologically intertwined. Recognizing depression as a contributor to cardiovascular physiology supports routine screening, integrated mental-cardiac care, and interventions targeting both behavioral and biological risk pathways.

Read at Psychology Today