*Some of our website is still under construction. Please check back soon for updates * - September 7, 2011
Research in the Behavioural Cardiology Laboratory is based on the premise that psychological distress and poor emotion regulation affect physical health. Well-being, personal meaning, and social embeddedness on the other hand may buffer against illness.
Despite massive research efforts worldwide we still do not know enough about the connection of emotion and health and how we can change it for the better. Our research broadly focuses on health risk behaviors and emotions and how they affect physiological processes and health behaviors that are relevant for the etiology, treatment and rehabilitation in cardiovascular disease and cancer. This description risks sounding a bit dry but do see a listing of the research questions we are pursuing below.
Our work is conducted in the well-equipped 4-room Behavioural Cardiology Laboratory here at UBC but also at the BC Cancer Agency and at St. Paul’s Hospital (the Provincial Heart Center). We use a variety of methodologies to help answer our questions; these include experimental laboratory studies, clinical trials, hospital-based basic research, program evaluation, and critical analyses of the literature.
With financial support from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the Heart and Stroke Foundation of B.C. and Yukon, the Hecht Foundation, and a variety of cancer funding agencies, our group of about 8 includes Dr. Linden, Dr. Andrea Vodermaier (Research Fellow) 3 PhD students, as well as a wonderful group of paid and volunteer research assistants). Together we are working on these key questions:
Cardiovascular Disease
- Which psychological and medical factors predict who recovers best from coronary artery bypass surgery? How are men and women different during cardiac rehabilitation? Which psychological factors explain why some people’s blood pressure does not drop at night?How detrimental is habitual rumination and poor anger coping to cardiovascular health? What is the link between poor sleep and cardiovascular health?
Cancer
- If we identify early which cancer patients need psychological support and then offer treatment, will that improve their quality of life and make the lengthy treatment process easier to tolerate?
- How do people adjust to a cancer diagnosis? Can we predict who adjusts best?
- Is stress reduction via self-help as effective as professionally-led programs?
- How can we use the web to facilitate access to psychosocial services and/or offer supportive treatment?
- How can we translate research knowledge into best clinical practice for all?