PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Hamer, Mark AU - Kivimaki, Mika AU - Stamatakis, Emmanuel AU - Batty, G. David TI - Psychological distress as a risk factor for death from cerebrovascular disease AID - 10.1503/cmaj.111719 DP - 2012 Sep 18 TA - Canadian Medical Association Journal PG - 1461--1466 VI - 184 IP - 13 4099 - http://www.cmaj.ca/content/184/13/1461.short 4100 - http://www.cmaj.ca/content/184/13/1461.full SO - CMAJ2012 Sep 18; 184 AB - Background: Little is known about psychological risk factors in cerebrovascular disease. We examined the association between psychological distress and risk of death due to cerebrovascular disease.Methods: We obtained data from 68 652 adult participants of the Health Survey for England (mean age 54.9 [standard deviation 13.9] yr, 45.0% male sex) with no known history of cardiovascular diseases at baseline. We used the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) to assess the presence of psychological distress. We followed participants for eight years for cause-specific death using linkage to national registers.Results: There were 2367 deaths due to cardiovascular disease during follow-up. Relative to participants with no symptoms of psychological distress (GHQ-12 score 0) at baseline, people with psychological distress (GHQ-12 score ≥ 4, 14.7% of participants) had an increased risk of death from cerebrovascular disease (adjusted hazard ratio [HR] 1.66, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.32–2.08) and ischemic heart disease (adjusted HR 1.59, 95% CI 1.34–1.88). There was also evidence of a dose–response effect with increasing GHQ-12 score (p for trend < 0.001 in all analyses). Associations were only marginally attenuated after we adjusted for possible confounders, including socioeconomic status, smoking and use of antihypertensive medications.Interpretation: Psychological distress was associated with increased risk of death due to cerebrovascular disease in a large population-representative cohort. These data suggest that the cardiovascular effects of psychological distress are not limited to coronary artery disease.See related commentary by Pan and Rexrode on page 1453 and at www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.121288