The leading authority on the emotional effects of heart disease tells you and your family how to heal and reclaim your lives.
When a patient is being treated, his or her medical team's focus is on the clinical part of saving a life. Psychological issues are rarely addressed before medical intervention or upon release from doctor's care. Yet the reason some people recover and lead productive lives while others don't lies in the relationship between health and behaviour.
Dr Wayne Sotile, Director of Psychological Services at the Wake Forest University Cardiac Rehabilitation Program, the world's first comprehensive mind/body center for living with heart disease, has discovered in 25 years working with heart patients that medicines, surgeries, diet, and exercise are not all that matter for the millions of people who could be living long, happy lives following a heart illness.
The generally ignored obstacles heart patients face revolve around their emotional health are the exclusive focus of this groundbreaking book. Neither about nutrition nor exercise, this book leads heart patients and their families through a step-by-step process of healing, working as a team, embracing a new way of "feeling normal", and fighting the depression, anxiety, chronic anger, relationship tensions, or social isolation that accompany heart illness too much of the time.
The book is laced with real life scenarios, the everyday challenges and frustrations that all heart patients face. Numerous self-assessment tools are provided to engage readers in the commonsense understanding of the steps involved in shaping positive coping. Sotile offers specific guidelines for managing the five major psychological problems (noted above).
Stemming from the recent explosion of cutting-edge research on cardiac-specific the connection between psychological wellness and heart recovery, and based on clinical expertise in treating literally thousands of patients, this book shows how the tens of millions of heart patients can live very long, very well, and very, very happily with this second-chance disease.
