If you suffer from mental health issues like severe anxiety, you may find seeing an anxiety therapist in west London an effective way of relieving your symptoms. But the benefits may extend further than previously believed.
While it has increasingly been understood that mental and physical health are interlinked, a new study by University College London has taken this understanding to a new level.
Depression and anxiety often come together and the study found that when talking therapies like CBT are used to treat depression in over-45s, the risk of death from cardiovascular disease is reduced.
The study noted that cardiovascular events like heart attacks and strokes accounted for 32 per cent of deaths globally in 2019, with people suffering from depression being 72 per cent more likely to develop cardiovascular disease.
Studying almost 637,000 people over 45 who used the NHS Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme between 2012 and 2020, the researchers found that over a period of three years after ending their CBT treatment programmes, those who had demonstrated improvements in their depression symptoms were 12 per cent less likely to develop cardiovascular disease.
This was more pronounced for those below the age of 60, with the cardiovascular disease risk down 15 per cent and a 22 per cent fall in the risk of death from any cause.
Lead author Celine El Baou said: “This study is the first to establish a link between psychological therapy outcomes and future risk of cardiovascular disease.”
She added: “The findings are important as they suggest that the benefits of psychological therapy may extend beyond mental health outcomes and to long-term physical health.”
Mental health charities like Mind have highlighted the links between physical and mental health before, advocating smoking cessation, better diet and exercise as ways of improving both. But this later research has provided evidence of a whole new area of dual improvement in outcomes.
If you need therapy, you may find the results heart-warming in more ways than one.