If you have suffered from heart failure and suffer from depression, it is important that you seek medical help as your depression might kill you.
There is a five-time greater risk of death among heart failure patients if they also suffer from depression and even a moderate form can have devastating effects, a new study has found. It also stated that there is 80 per cent lower mortality rate among people, who suffer heart failure, but not depression.
The approach towards reducing mortality among heart failure patients is medication, recognizing depression and then deliver counseling and more holistic approach for depression management.
The symptoms of depression are loss of motivation, lack of interest in regular activities, poor quality of life, low confidence, change in appetite, poor sleep pattern, change in weight and all these aspects have a major impact on the course of life. This also clarifies the link between depression and mortality.
It is prime to manage depression seeing the severity of disease and several factors are there that support this, according to researchers.
A professor of cardiology at the Imperial College London and the chief investigator of the study said that the study shows a strong association between depression and risk of death in the year after discharge from hospital. It is expected that the link persists beyond one year.
There were several patients enrolled for the study, and they had heart failure. About 103 patients among the total number of patients were not depressed, mild depression was seen among 27 people and 24 had moderate to severe depression. There were 27 reported deaths during the mean follow up period of 3012 days.
It was found that patients with moderate to severe depression had a five times greater risk of death compared to those who had mild or no depression.
The association however remained the same, in spite of severity of heart failure or the presence of comorbities.
