Type D Personality: Health and Heart Risks. Are you a heart patient with a “Type D” personality? Then you have a greater risk of developing future cardiovascular problems such as peripheral artery disease, angioplasty or bypass procedure, heart failure, heart transplantation, heart attack or death and other cardiovascular problems.
This was the finding of a research, published Sept. 14 in the Journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, which looked at the “link between heart and psychological health and Type D personality”.
Says senior research author Viola Spek about their findings: “Type D patients tend to experience increased levels of anxiety, irritation and depressed mood across situations and time, while not sharing these emotions with others because of fear of disapproval. We found that Type D personality predicts (illness and death) in these patients, independent of traditional medical risk factors.” Spek is a researcher at the Tiburg University in the Netherlands.
The researchers also found that a Type D personality faces a three-fold increase in the long-term risk of psychological conditions such as depression, anxiety or poor mental health.
The researchers suggest that physicians screen heart patients with a Type D personality so that they could be provided with psychological or behavioural counselling.
The report identifies people with Type D personalities as those “characterized by negative emotions, pessimism and social inhibition.