It is entirely normal, common and understandable for a person to experience a variety of emotions after having had a heart attack. Each individual’s experience is likely to be unique to them. A heart attack can have a big impact on a person’s relationships. Talking through these issues with other people can help you to make sense of and understand your own feelings. Despite these different factors influencing the reactions, there are some common psychological reactions to having had a heart attack. Some of the social psychological factors are as follows;
– Fear of having another heart attack or re-experiencing intense physical pain.
– Helplessness of feeling that you are powerless, that there is nothing you can do.
– Anger at what has happened and the unfairness and senselessness of it all.
– Shock feelings of disbelief questioning “why me”.
– Sadness and grief for losing your feelings of being healthy and losing your sense of being invulnerable.
Some people find that returning to their normal self takes some time and that they have periods when thoughts and feelings about their heart attack come back.
Conclusion
The epidemic of heart disease and stroke can be expected to continue, with an increasing burden and widening disparities, unless unprecedented public health efforts are mounted to arrest and reverse it. This challenge will test the ability of public health institutions at all levels to fulfill their obligation to protect society against this rising epidemic of heart disease in women. Three factors affect the current challenge. Support for public health programs to prevent heart disease and stroke is low. State public health agencies expend less than 3% of their budgets on chronic disease programs, including heart disease and stroke prevention. The costs of failure are very high. The economic costs of heart disease and stroke rise each year.
These costs include the numbers of people requiring treatment for risk factors or early signs of disease; emergency treatment for first or recurrent episodes of heart attack, heart failure and efforts to reduce disability and prevent recurrent episodes. These costs will escalate further if this epidemic is not halted and heart disease, consume many of our nation’s health care dollars, yet they are largely preventable. Health professionals have become more aware of the need for immediate action as they increasingly recognize the continuing cardiovascular epidemic, recent unfavorable trends, and forecasts of a mounting disease burden. Public health achievements have been made in preventing heart disease and stroke, but there is much room for improvement. Public health serves society by guaranteeing conditions of life in which people can be healthy and by addressing three core functions; assessment, policy development, and assurance.
Achievements in these areas as they relate to heart disease include the following: Assessment. For several decades, public health agencies and researchers have collected data on the epidemic and conducted research on how to control it. Although important gaps persist, knowledge provides a solid evidence base for public health decision making. Policy development. A wealth of policies has been developed on the basis of this knowledge. Evaluating these policies requires implementation on a sufficient scale and adequate resources for evaluation. Assurance. Assurance, measured by how much society is protected from epidemic heart disease, remains to be achieved despite recent progress. Public health agencies
