ABSTRACT
Congenital heart disease (CHD) is one of the biggest success stories in medicine. However, health care givers have focused on medical, morphologic and hemodynamic problems, and have not adequately addressed psychosocial issues in patients with CHD. Indeed, health problems with limited exercise performance, recurrent hospital admission, interventions and operations, general anesthesia, absence from the family, friends and school, scar tissue, and other factors have an important impact on the psychosocial burden of adults with CHD. Adults with CHD have had the defect since childhood, so their mental state is often very vulnerable and different to that of cardiac patients who develop their defect in adulthood. Adults with CHD may feel unjustly ill-fated; occasionally, they may feel it is the physicians not helping them enough who are in fact responsible for their condition. Patients with CHD are successfully engaging in full adult responsibilities and roles, but they do experience specific psychosocial challenges that may impact emotional functioning, self-perception, and peer relationships.
