Effects of social context on psychological responses to survived myocardial infarction

Persons respond in a diversity of ways to the crisis of acute myocardial infarction (MI). The social contexts of 120 survivors of MI was examined to determine whether this influenced such responses, working on the assumption that MI would represent a greater threat to the livelihoods of certain groups of persons than it would for other groups. The most prominent influence was observed for patients' occupation, where persons in so-called blue collar occupations exhibited significantly more anxiety in response to MI than did persons in white collar occupations. It was argued that this arose from the possibility that the nature of blue collar jobs was physical, and that loss of myocardial tissue might be expected to more markedly interfere with their work efficiency (on returning to work) than it would the efficiency of the more sedentary jobs of white collar workers.