Nearly 20% of adults in the US have some mental health condition, with anxiety and depression being the most common. Aside from the toll these conditions take on a person’s mental health, they can also have important effects on other key organs, including the heart.
Some of these effects result from changes in your behaviors. For instance, anxiety and depressed mood can make someone more likely to be inactive, eat too much, smoke cigarettes, and drink too much alcohol, and these same behaviors are also tied to heart problems like heart attacks.
There are also ways that anxiety and depressed mood can more directly affect your heart. Let’s take a deeper look at exactly how your mental health affects your heart health.
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The Impact of Anxiety on the Heart
You can probably imagine some of the effects that anxiety has on the heart, as many of the symptoms of anxiety are expressed as heart-related, such as heart racing.
This is because anxiety can activate our body’s stress response, which triggers symptoms like:
rapid heart rate
increased blood pressure
decreased heart rate variability (a measure of the variation in time between heartbeats)
Although our hearts are designed to handle occasional anxiety and stress, prolonged and sustained anxiety can impact our body’s response to stress, and even increase the amount of inflammation in our body’s blood vessels.
The precise mechanism is unclear, but we do know that people with generalized anxiety disorder have higher rates of heart attacks and other cardiac events, including dying from a heart-related cause.
The Impact of Depression on the Heart
Just like with anxiety, studies have pointed to an increased likelihood of cardiac events like a heart attack in people suffering from depression. Some of this is related to how depressed mood impacts our behaviors, but some are also related to the increased stress response that our body has to depression, much like anxiety.
As a result of these similarities, it may not surprise you to learn that depression is a predictor of heart problems like heart attacks, and even predicts increased mortality in patients with chronic cardiac conditions like congestive heart failure.
Management of Anxiety and Depressed Mood
Occasional anxiety or depressed mood can be normal responses to events that take place in your life, but if you experience these more days than not or if your mood impacts your quality of life, you would probably benefit from treatment for your anxiety and depressed mood.
Treatment for these conditions can range from self-guided activities, to therapy with a mental health professional, to medications.
Often the improvement in your symptoms will require all three, or some combination. You can always log on to the K health app and chat with one of our doctors to learn if you might benefit from treatment for your mood. K Health also offers K Therapy, a text-based therapy program that includes unlimited messaging with a licensed therapist, plus free resources designed by mental health experts to use on your own.
If you’re having a mental health emergency, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room. You can also get free 24/7 support from a suicide and crisis expert by calling or texting 988. If you’d prefer to chat online, you can chat with a suicide and crisis expert by visiting the Lifeline Chat.
How K Health Can Help
It’s important to note that treatment for anxiety and depression is not one-size-fits-all and it’s something you should discuss with a primary care physician or trained mental health professional.
K Health can help you manage your anxiety with custom treatment plans, FDA-approved medications, and doctor check-ins every two weeks. Learn more about our anxiety and depression treatment program and start a free assessment today.
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When to See a Doctor
If your anxiety and depression feel overwhelming and prevents you from performing everyday tasks, then a more comprehensive care plan is usually necessary and you should talk to a doctor for help.
If you’re having a mental health emergency, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room. You can also get free 24/7 support from a suicide and crisis expert by calling or texting 988. If you’d prefer to chat online, you can chat with a suicide and crisis expert by visiting the Lifeline Chat.