Background: It has long been established that psycho emotive stress, stressful life events and negative traits are relevant issues in the onset of Myocardial Infarction (MI). More over life event research has provided a pragmatic research oriented viewpoint to a causal association between stressful life events, of varying degree and onset of physical diseases like CHD (Rahe, 1990, 1994; Rahe & Arthur, 1978). Evidence pointing in direction of complex and stable biopsychosocial associative patterns has compelled researchers to focus their endeavors on finding association between personality traits, etiology and prognosis of physical illnesses. Scientific community has for long confirmed an association between personality types: Type A, C, D and onset of CHD. Inspite of all these research efforts very few researchers have focused on investigating whether there is difference in stressful life events faced by male and female patients and further more whether there exists, gender differences in coronary prone personalities.
Objective: The present study investigated gender differences in stressful life events and personality profiles of patients with myocardial infarction.
Method: Cross-sectional research design was used and a sample of women (n=25) and men (n=25), with a confirmed diagnosis of myocardial infarction, was taken from different hospitals through purposive sampling technique. A modified version of Holmes and Rahe’s (1967) social readjustment rating scale, stressful life events questionnaire, personality midlife development inventory (Lachman &Weaver, 1997) were translated into indigenous language to measure study variables.
Results: Independent sample t- test was used to for the purpose of analyzing data. The findings suggested significant gender differences in stressful life events in patients with myocardial infarction. No significant gender differences in personality profiles of patients with myocardial infarction were found for the study sample.
Conclusion: Study results point towards tailoring gender based cardiac rehabilitation and setting stage for preventive cardiology that may evolve the best way to optimize outcomes for both men and women. Further more study results point towards laying grounds for psycho-cardiology focusing on timely assessment of stress and stressful life events so that appropriate implementation of gender based stress management and relaxation techniques can be incorporated during the routine medical management of MI patients.