Recent Evidence Supporting Psychologic and Social Risk Factors for Coronary Disease

Abstract

Stress and Life ChangeExcessive overtime work, previously associated with increased risk of coronary disease, has received further support as a risk factor in the last five years. Theorell and Rahe57 compared 62 patients with myocardial infarction in Stockholm with 109 healthy employees of a municipal agency and found that the patients had been doing much more overtime work but had lower responsibility and less supervisory activity (and hence, presumably, a greater amount of physical exertion) than the healthy controls. However, the difference in the institutional sources from which the two groups were drawn might account for many of these . . .