People stressed after 9/11 had more heart problems

William Atkins
Saturday, 02 February 2008 20:42

Science - Health

According to a January 2008 U.S. study, people who were extremely stressed out in the days and weeks after the September 11, 2001 terrorist disasters in New York City and Washington D.C., were more likely to have cardiovascular (heart and related) problems.     

Medical researcher F. Alison Holman, from the Department of Nursing Science, University of California, Irvine (UC-Irvine), and fellow collaborators studied 2,592 adults that represented the average U.S. citizen.

They had already completed a survey in the summer of 2001, before the 9/11 incidents. Three weeks after the terrorist attacks on the United States, these same subjects were asked to complete another health survey.

In their paper’s abstract, the researchers stated, “The terrorist attacks of 9/11 (September 11, 2001) present an unusual opportunity to examine prospectively the physical health impact of extreme stress in a national sample.”

The survey asked questions to access their health status as to incidences of strokes, heart attacks, and other such problems.

Most people were not overly stressed out from the 9/11 attacks. However, about 20% of the subjects were, indeed, stressed out. They felt emotionally drained and were unable to concentrate. They showed classic signs of being under stress.

Controlling for external factors (such as smoking, obesity, and other factors that would alter results), Holman’s group found that these stressed out people displayed a 53% increase in new cases of heart and blood vessel problems over the next three years.

In addition, 16% of the subjects continued to worry about the terrorist attacks long after 9/11. They developed new health problems that were three times more frequent that the other 84% of the subjects.

They concluded in their published paper: “Using health data collected before 9/11 as a baseline, acute stress response to the terrorist attacks predicted increased reports of physician-diagnosed cardiovascular ailments over 3 years following the attacks.”

Their results (“Terrorism, Acute Stress, and Cardiovascular Health: A 3-Year National Study Following the September 11th Attacks”) were written up in the January 2008 issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.

Holman’s colleagues included: Roxane Cohen Silver (Departments of Psychology and Social Behavior and Medicine, UC-Irvine), Michael Poulin (Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor), Judith Andersen (Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Syracuse, New York), Virginia Gil-Rivas (Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina, Charlotte), and Daniel N. McIntosh (University of Denver, Colorado).