Psychological responses to illness and outcome after survived myocardial infarction: a long term follow-up.

Psychological responses to illness were examined in 120 survivors of myocardial infarction (MI) within two weeks of the clinical event. An attempt was then made to follow these patients over two years to investigate the influence of illness behaviour on outcome, defined cardiologically, occupationally and subjectively. Illness behaviour related only tenuously to cardiological and occupational outcome at two years after MI, though associations were rather more prominent where a subjective assessment of well-being constituted the outcome variable. This was in contrast with associations evidence eight months after MI. It was suggested that the influence of illness behaviour on the more objective and important measures of outcome (cardiological and occupational) is almost fully apparent at eight months after MI.