Social stress and vascular diseases

Abstract

Both in China and abroad, the modern era of medicine and biomedical science has provided substantial improvements to the heath and quality of life of populations across many parameters. Concomitant with these improvements, however, the deleterious consequences of modern social production must also be investigated if we wish to produce a full account of how it has modified health. One such deleterious consequence is mental illness, which currently accounts for a substantial proportion of the disease burden worldwide. In this paper, we present one prominent component of this burden: the association of mental disorders with cerebrovascular disease. It has been established in the literature that cerebrovascular disease and mental illness are reciprocally aggravating; by discussing what is currently known about the mechanisms that mediate this relationship, we hope to stimulate future investigation into what is still unknown. We believe that further understanding in this area would not only improve our ability to treat patients with mental and cerebrovascular disease but also yield valuable insight into what factors, whether psychosocial, biological, or both, might constitute their common origin, and thus present a target for prevention.