Coping with myocardial infarction: a cognitive-emotional perspective.

The present paper attempts to make a cognitive-emotional reconstruction of the old, as yet unresolved question as to what role anxiety and denial play as response to acute myocardial infarction (MI). Anxiety is understood as the turning of attention to features of threat, and denial as turning attention away from these features. Each direction is supported by mental argumentations, which is to say subjective theories. A number of relationships between emotional coping and somatic symptoms, such as angina pectoris or atypical chest pain, are treated at greater length. The main areas of perceived stress, lay concepts of etiology, and expectations regarding rehabilitation are explored, taking a cognitive-emotional perspective. The results are discussed in the light of the crucial issue of acceptance MI patients have of psychological treatment.