Abstract

 BACKGROUND:
Both heart diseases and depression are highly prevalent, Depression can add to the suffering
already present due to the physical condition of the cardiac patients and it affects the outcome.
OBJECTIVE:
Is to find-out the prevalence of depressive disorder among patients with three different categories
of heart diseases in three different Iraqi Hospitals; to find out gender differences, some
demographical data and the difference between first time affected patients and recurrent cases of
heart problems, in regard to the prevalence of depression in these patients.
PATIENTS AND METHODS:
A case control study was conducted using 100 patients, with an age range from 30-89y who has
been diagnosed by Qualified Internists, this group was compared with another 100 control group
with the same age and at the same time, both groups were examined for the presence of
depressive disorder using ICD-10 diagnostic criteria and then assessing the severity of the
depression in the depressed group by using Beck Depressive Inventory.
RESULTS:
The present study revealed that (24%) of study patients compared to (4%) of the control group
were depressed and there was a significant association between the severity of depression and
the different types of heart diseases, also females were more severely depressed than males.
CONCLUSION:
There is a high rate of depression among patients with different types of heart diseases, which is
often goes unrecognized, untreated, and under estimated, early detection of depression is critical,
because of adverse outcome attributed to depression.