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HAPPINESS, JOY LINKED TO BETTER SURVIVAL RATES IN HEART PATIENTS | |
| Contact: Beverly Brummett Phone: 919-684-6129 Email: brummett@acpub.duke.edu Embargoed until: March 8, 2003 |
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PHOENIX – Positive emotions such as joy, euphoria and optimism have been linked to better survival rates for cardiac catheterization patients, according to a researcher from Duke University Medical Center. Clear associations between negative emotions, such as anger and hostility, and negative physical consequences have been reported previously, but few studies have sought to examine what, if any, impact positive emotions, or affect, could have on physical health. Patients who reported frequently experiencing positive emotions in their lives lived longer, in general, than those who did not. In fact, persons who reported higher scores on the overall experience of positive affect exhibited about a 20 percent reduction in the risk of death during the study period. Beverly Brummett, Ph.D., assistant research professor of medical psychology at Duke prepared the findings for presentation today (March 5, 2003) at the 61st meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society. The study was designed to see if positive affect was a predictor of survival of all-cause mortality -- death due to any instance, not just heart disease -- in coronary patients. The study sample consisted of 866 Duke cardiac catheterization patients who were tracked for an average of 11.4 years. The average age of patients was 60.3 years at time of catheterization and nearly three-fourths were male. The prevalence of positive emotions and positive personality traits were assessed using the Positive Emotions facet of the Extraversion domain for the NEO personality inventory. Patients reported how often they experienced positive emotions such as the urge to jump for joy; intense joy; optimism; light-heartedness; and the ability to laugh easily. “I am excited about the findings between positive affect and longevity,” Brummett said. “However, these findings could also suggest that it isn’t so much the experience of positive affect per se that predicts longer life – a deeper analysis of our data suggests that the benefit may ultimately be related to the absence of negative mood. In other words, positive affect may be healthy to the extent that it helps ward off the experience of negative affect.” | |
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Psychosomatic Medicine is the official peer-reviewed journal of the American Psychosomatic Society, published bimonthly. For information about the journal, contact Vicki White, Managing Editor for Manuscript Production,
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