Brief group therapy following myocardial infarction: eighteen-month follow-up of a controlled trial.

Abstract

Sixty post-myocardial infarction (MI) subjects have been followed for up to eighteen months' time following their MI. Thirty-eight of these subjects completed a brief series of four to six group therapy sessions during their early rehabilitation phase; the others received no group therapy. Both groups were placed on otherwise identical schedules of outpatient follow-up. Group therapy patients have, to date, experienced significantly fewer cardiac complications than controls. Only one death has occurred, and that one patient was in the control group. A coronary heart disease teaching evaluation questionnaire was given to a sample of group therapy patients, a sample of controls, and a comparison group of men without MI. Following their group therapy sessions, these men demonstrated significantly greater knowledge of their disease and its optimal rehabilitation than did control or comparison subjects. Control patients' questionnaire results proved to be insignificantly different from those of the comparison group.