From the category archives:
[As I have mentioned before, Carolyn Thomas's www.myheartsisters.org is the best heart blog on the Web -- she frequently deals with the the post-heart attack psychological world. Here is an excellent first person narrative of how the world changes after a heart attack.] from the article It means learning how to take naps, or just [...]
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One of the themes in the past weeks is that depression can be an adaptive response. This article from Scientific American covers one of the benefits of depression — that rumination can help to solve problems. After a heart attack, for instance, it can be very important to ruminate on what is really important in [...]
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(Continuing on the theme that “The way out is through”, that depression after a heart attack is not something that can be easily denied or medicated away…) Dream of Ravens On the mythological level, nigredo signifies the difficulties man has to overcome on his journey through the underworld. Nigredo is sometimes called ‘blacker than the [...]
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As mentioned in yesterday’s post about the adaptive strategy of depression, the Jungian metaphor for the journey is that of the “nigredo”, the first stage of alchemy. Although the excerpt below is primarily about the encounter with the psychological shadow that needs to be dealt with, it is also descriptive of the encounter with mortality, [...]
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Why should people dying of cancer have all the fun? Heart patients have anxiety and depression too… Here is an idea for research — give folks psilocybin after a heart attack and see if it reduces the trauma….. I would bet that would, actually…. Sign me up for after my next heart attack… By Thomas [...]
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309.81 Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (7) sense of a foreshortened future (e.g., does not expect to have a career, marriage, children, or a normal life span) Three months after the heart attack, I went to Home Depot to buy something for the house. I walked inside, saw the plethora of nice things to make a nice [...]
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The following article is an excellent review of the original studies involving depression, anxiety and prognosis after a heart attack. (Note, however, that it is from 2003.) The conclusion of the article bears repeating: “Treating symptoms of anxiety and depression in MI patients is an abiding imperative.” Anxiety, depression, and prognosis after myocardial infarction Is [...]
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