[Stress: a treatable cardiovascular risk factor?].

The study of psychosomatic factors in the pathogenesis of ischemic heart disease has followed three directions, a clinical-phenomenologic, physiologic-behavioral and a curricular-psychodynamic one. From the sixties onward Type A behavior has been prevailing as concept for the investigation of prospective importance of psychic factors in ischemic heart disease. Such a behavior-oriented view alone proves however to be inadequate. For a comprehensive approach to psychic risk factors and their treatment and prevention anxiety, depression, important experiences in life and individual biographic constellations are equally important. They represent factors only approximated by the conventional term "stress".