Chapters Transcript Video Association of Poor Mental Health With Cardiovascular Disease and Suboptimal Cardiovascular Health Among Young U.S. Adults Back to Symposium Hello everybody. My name is Karima Sharma. I'm a cardiologist at johns Hopkins. I'm here to tell you about our new study that will be presented at the american Heart Association scientific sessions in Chicago. It is on the Association of Mental Health with Cardiovascular health and cardiovascular disease and Young US adults. We know that depression is a non traditional risk factor for cardiovascular disease. However, the association of depression and poor mental health with sub optimal cardiovascular health in young U. S. Population is not well known. And so for this we really looked at the Association of Depression with both cardiovascular disease as well as sub optimal cardiovascular health in the young US population. And what we found was that cardiovascular disease was about 2.5 times more likely in those Individuals with depression than those without. And we also found that individuals with depression were about 70% more likely to have sub optimal cardiovascular health defined as risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes, smoking physical in activity as well as poor diet. Um in this patient population, this is an extremely important association and really focuses on asking our patients about their depressive symptoms and screening patients who are young who may have adverse cardiovascular health or cardiovascular disease which is premature for depression as well. Thank you Created by