Psychosocial Risk Factors for Coronary Heart Disease, Their Importance Compared with Other Risk Factors and Gender Differences in Sensitivity

Background Few studies have focused on risk factors in women's lives concerning psychosocial factors and coronary heart disease (CHD). The present study is one of a series in which a wide range of psychosocial factors will be analysed with a focus on women. Women and men have been compared with respect to sensitivity to psychosocial risk factors regarding CHD. The importance of psychosocial risk factors for women, compared with biomedical risk factors has also been studied. Methods A questionnaire (The Stress Profile) was answered by 538 rehabilitation participants (97 women, 441 men) and a reference group (5308 women, 5177 men), aged 40-65 years. Psychosocial factors were investigated using means and b-coefficients. Comparisons between psychosocial and biomedical risk factors were made, with respect to the product of the β-coefficient and the standard deviation for each compared risk factor. Results Significant differences appeared concerning five areas: Work content, workload and control, physical stress reactions, emotional stress reactions and burnout. All showed that the relative sensitivity was larger for women than for men. Predictive psychosocial risk factors for women with respect to CHD were physical stress reactions, emotional stress reactions, burnout, family relationships and daily hassles/satisfactions, and they were on approximately the same level as biomedical risk factors. Conclusions Women appear to be more sensitive than men with respect to psychosocial risk factors for CHD, and the predictive ability of psychosocial risk factors shows great importance. Actions against unhealthy psychosocial conditions are recommended. Both presumptive CHD patients and others might benefit from preventive actions, and since women are more sensitive they will probably gain more than men. Conclusions. This study shows that women appear to be more sensitive than men with respect to psychosocial risk factors for CHD containing work content, workload and control, physical and emotional stress reactions and burnout. Our data also show a pattern, which could indicate that women experience more psychosocial pressure than men. When comparing predictive ability of psychosocial risk factors versus some traditional risk variables for CHD we could show the importance of such factors. Actions against unhealthy psychosocial conditions, especially in the work environment, are recommended for several reasons. Both presumptive CHD patients and others might benefit from such preventive actions, and since women are more sensitive they will probably gain more than men.