Self‐reported depressive symptoms in women hospitalized for acute coronary syndrome

Accessible summary Depressive symptoms are common in women hospitalized for acute coronary syndrome, but symptom experience and severity may differ across a women's lifetime. Tiredness or fatigue, loss of energy and sleep disturbances were the three depressive symptoms most frequently reported by depressed women, hospitalized for acute coronary syndrome, across all age groups. These results stress the need to further understand the complexity of depressive symptoms in women with cardiovascular disease. Abstract The purpose of this cross‐sectional observational study was to explore depressive symptoms, among 377 women, during hospitalization for acute coronary syndrome ( ACS ). Women were screened for depressive symptoms using the B eck D epression I nventory‐ II ( BDI‐II ). Pearson chi‐squared tests for independence were used for comparisons between categorical variables and t ‐tests for independent samples were used for comparisons between continuous variables. T ukey's honestly significant difference test along with one‐way anova test was used to conduct multiple comparisons between the three defined age groups ranging from 29–49, 50–64 to ≥65 years. A total of 118 women screened positive for depression ( BDI‐II score ≥ 14). The percentage of women that met the criteria for a positive depression screening was significantly different between the three age groups. The proportion of depressed women who reported feelings of sadness, past failures, punishment, self‐dislike, agitation, worthlessness, sleep disturbances and irritability varied significantly by age group. Study findings indicate that symptom experience and severity may differ across a lifetime. These results support the need to understand the complexity of depressive symptoms experienced by women. The ability to understand and recognize depressive symptoms in women, with ACS , may assist healthcare professionals with the management of a modifiable cardiovascular risk factor.