Anna is a middle aged woman working in the stressful environment of a trading room in Wall Street. She exercises regularly and is not overweight, so her chest pain and diagnosis of coronary heart disease come as a total surprise.
She has always viewed herself as a vigorous person, and even this health crisis, treated by coronary angioplasty (stents put into one of her coronary arteries to keep it open) is seen as a “miracle” of modern medicine allowing her to go back to a fully enjoyable personal and professional life. She has had no recurrences of chest pain and her cardiologist considers her a success case.
Molly is a post-menopausal woman, struggling in the challenging role of public high school teacher, equally pressured by the ever-mounting bureaucracy and unruly, aggressive students. Molly has always felt that “sooner or later I will have a heart attack”. This self-fulfilling prophecy is followed by the same angioplasty that Anna has received, but with a different outcome, a rare complication, a thrombosis, requiring more invasive surgery, a coronary bypass . She needs months of rehabilitation before resumi
How can we account for the different outcomes of two very similar case histories? May Anna’s optimism have helped along her healing process and conversely Molly’s negative attitude contributed to her complications?
Many studies have been conducted in the US and in Europe pointing to a positive correlation between optimism and medical and psychological well-being.
Different medical conditions have been investigated, from cancer to heart disease, from auto- immune illnesses to depression.
An optimistic disposition is what makes you see “the glass half-full”, or, to quote the 17th century philosopher Leibniz, makes you feel you live “in the best of all possible worlds “. It allows you to accept the past, to enjoy the present and to look at the future with hope.
The eternal dilemma : “is it nature or nurture?” does not have a univocal answer . Research shows that an “optimistic disposition“ may be 50% genetically determined, you are born with it. But the other 50%, nurture, is variable. Most scientists believe that at least 30/40% of that may derive from the way you think, that can be modified by certain practices (such as savouring good moments, forgiving others and yourself, to name just a few) and, of course, psychotherapy, the cognitive -behavioral type (CBT) that aims at changing your thinking to modify your feelings.
This acquired cognitive frame of mind leads to better coping mechanisms , more creative problem solving, qualities that are success predictors whether you work in a competitive environment or you are a parent raising children at home.
In Psychiatry, we know how important it is to counsel our patients to get treatment for depression as early as the first symptoms appear. Depression colors one‘s view of the world, pervasive pessimism is projected into the future. It’s a “paralysis of the soul” that may depress your immune system and lead to all kinds of physical illness.
