ABSTRACT
Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the leading cause of death worldwide. In this chapter, we examine the association between CVD and posttraumatic growth (PTG) and the psychosocial factors involved in this relationship. This chapter summarized current literature on PTG in the context of the major CVD-category-related empirical evidence. While we have found some promising findings relative to PTG such as optimism, personal traits, and social support, the updated literature does not lead to the overall conclusion on which factors help foster PTG after a CVD event, based on limited studies with advanced research designs. We discuss the limitations of the existing studies such as many were cross-sectional in nature (while using causal language), used smaller samples, and failed to control for mental health confounds and medical indices. We conclude that future research on the topic should have higher standards such as prospective design, a large sample size, multivariate analysis with adequate medical and mental health controls, and attrition analysis to present solid evidence to convince medical and cardiac health providers. Clearly, this area of research remains in its developmental stage.
