Pathogenic life changes in middle adulthood and coronary heart disease: a life-span developmental perspective

Empirical evidence is reviewed about the contributions of life changes and the coronary-prone behavior pattern in the development of myocardial infarction in middle adulthood. Since established clinical risk factors account for about half of the total variance, it is necessary to explore in more detail the crucial developmental role that distressing psychologic and social parameters should play. Because of the generally prolonged incubation period of the effects of psychosocial risk factors, it is proposed that they should be studied from a life-span developmental perspective. Two metamodels seem appropriate in this respect: a mechanistic model by Dohrenwend and Dohrenwend, and an organismic model by Levinson. After scrutinizing some properties of these models, including their potential explanatory power, it is argued that an organismic model may predict better the pathogenic development of distressing psychosocial risk constellations over consecutive phases in the life course of the heart patient.