Death, depression, and heart disease.

A complex multidimensional relationship exists between affective disorder and cardiac disease, specifically with respect to pathophysiology, prognosis, and treatment. Though there are a number of possible perspectives from which to view this relationship, in this paper we concentrate on the depressed patient with preexisting cardiac disease with respect to (1) the rates of concurrence of the two disorders, (2) the influence of affective disorder on the prognosis of cardiac disease, and (3) the safe and effective treatment of depression in patients with preexisting illness.