Attitudes Toward Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors Among Patients Referred to a Cardiac Rehabilitation Center: Importance of Psychological Attitudes

Patients’ understanding of heart diseases and their related experiences can affect education and prevention of coronary heart diseases. As the patients’ beliefs play a crucial role in the development of effective therapeutic relationship, psychological adjustment, and compliance with treatment recommendations.. The purpose of this study was to investigate the attitudes toward psychological risk factors for cardiovascular disease among patients referred to a cardiac rehabilitation center in Imam Ali Hospital in Kermanshah, Iran.Patients and This cross-sectional study was performed on 775 patients referred to a cardiac rehabilitation unit in Imam Ali hospital in Kermanshah, Iran. Data were collected using clinical interview, patients’ medical records, and Millon clinical multiaxial inventory (MCMI-III), and analyzed by descriptive statistics, including mean, standard deviation, and chi‐square test. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS software version 18. The patients believed that the main cause of their illness is behavioral risk factors (42.0%). Then, they referred to psychological (36.3%), biological (4.3%), and environmental (3.8%) factors, respectively. 10.4% of the patients were not aware of the cause of their illness. Also, stress is the most important factor among the psychological factors (27.5%). The results showed that there was a significant difference among the patients in term of four attitudes (χ2 = 820.356; P < 0.01); and behavioral and psychological attitudes (χ2 = 6.025; P < 0.05). In fact, the patients identified behavioral problems as the main cause of their illness.. According to the patients’ attitudes, after the behavioral factors, psychological factors are the second cause of heart diseases. Therefore, ignoring these factors by members of the medical teams may lead to a poor performance of the treatments. As these factors are controllable, learning to control and manage them can prevent the development of subsequent cardiovascular events..