Psychological resilience is associated with an improved capacity to cope with chronic health challenges such as cardiovascular disease.

The aim of this cross-sectional study was to examine the relationship between psychological resilience and symptoms of depression in a non-acute cardiac outpatient population.

A total of 419 adult cardiac outpatients (288 men; mean±SD age 66.26±14.04 years) attending cardiovascular clinics completed the Sense of Coherence (SOC13) scale as a measure of psychological resilience and the Cardiac Depression Scale (CDS26) prior to their consultation.

The total SOC13 score (mean±SD 64.02±14.24, range 19–91) was within the moderate range. Older patients (>=65 years) were significantly more resilient than those aged <65 (p<0.01). Psychological resilience (SOC13) was negatively correlated with depression (CDS26) (r=–0.79; p<0.001) and inversely associated with affective, cognitive and somatic symptoms of depression. Psychological resilience, particularly meaningfulness, accounted for more of the variance in affective features of depression than for somatic features.

These findings show that low psychological resilience was related to depression in this cohort of cardiac outpatients, particularly affective symptoms such as anhedonia and hopelessness. The SOC13 scale offers a complementary measure of psychological status that could be used to monitor, and possibly predict, patient coping and response to treatment throughout the cardiovascular disease trajectory.