Key 2010 publications in behavioral medicine

ABSTRACT

Previous research has demonstrated an association between depression and incident coronary heart disease (CHD); in 2010, well-controlled studies and meta-analyses went beyond depression to include anxiety, anger expression, and negative affect as predictors of incident CHD. Emerging research suggests that positive emotions and resilience (including the ability to self-regulate) offer protection against CHD. New research is elucidating the pathophysiology to explain the effects of emotion and resilience on disease risk; for example, recent work has begun to consider how the relaxation response promotes resilience and found that it induces genomic changes that counter oxidative stress and associated cellular damage.