Advances in Epidemiology and Related Mechanisms of Cardiovascular Diseases and Mental Illness

Abstract

According to the latest statistics released by the World Health Organization, cardiovascular disease ranks as the leading cause of death worldwide. The number of deaths caused by cardiovascular disease exceeds that of any other diseases, that needs to be tackled by global public health. At the same time, according to statistics released by the World Health Organization in 2022, the prevalence of mental illness in China is as high as 17%. In the past 20 years, the incidence of depression in the Chinese population has increased 120 times. The correlation between cardiovascular disease and mental illness has been found to be significant with an underlying mechanism. This article aims to elucidate advances in the correlation between cardiovascular disease and mental illness, as well as their underlying mechanisms, showing that anxiety and depression are important drivers of cardiovascular disease by causing damage to the heart through the autonomic nervous system and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, while ischemic cardiomyopathy and myocardial infarction can induce adverse mood and cognitive impairment by mediating ischemic damage and inflammatory responses in the brain. This article can provide additional preventive ideas for patients at high risk of cardiovascular disease, as well as for the diagnosis and treatment of patients with mental illness, and provide a reference for the psycho-cardiology interdiscipline.

Keywords

• cardiovascular diseases|mental illness|emotions|anxiety disorders|depressive disorder|autonomic nervous system|inflammatory response