Psychological interventions targeting mental health and stress among females with cardiac disease: a scoping review

Abstract

Interventions that target mental health symptoms and stress among those with established cardiac disease have included predominately male samples despite female patients reporting greater severity of these symptoms. The aim of this scoping review was to synthesize the published literature on psychological interventions for females with cardiac disease. We conducted a systematic search of peer-reviewed randomized clinical trials (RCTs) published in the English language from 2003 to 2023, in three databases: Medline (Ovid), PsycInfo (Ovid), and CINAHL (EBSCO). Articles that included female samples, a control or comparison group, implemented psychological interventions, and measured depression, anxiety, or stress as an outcome were included in the review. Nine articles describing eight RCTs of psychological interventions, with a total of 1587 female patients with cardiac disease, were included. Interventions were most successful at reducing stress (75% of studies measuring stress reported efficacy), while symptoms of depression and anxiety were less responsive to intervention (∼30% of studies targeting these symptoms reported improvements) in comparison to a control condition. This scoping review highlights that further advancement in knowledge is required to better address the needs of females with cardiac disease and distress, particularly depression and anxiety.