Anxiety is an under-investigated comorbidity in heart disease patients. Optimism/hope is a character strength that indicates confidence or favorable expectation about the future. Previous research has consistently reported optimal health outcomes among optimists. However, many studies have lacked adjustment for medical confounders and/or used small clinical samples. To bridge this gap, we tested the hypothesis that optimism/hope was inversely related to anxiety in 400+ patients with advanced heart disease during the stressful waiting period prior to open-heart surgery. The findings supported the hypothesis after controlling for general health, illness impact, behavioral risks, and cardiac medical indices used by surgeons.
Keywords: anxiety; coping; coronary heart disease; older person; optimism; religion.