I choose these elements to focus more on them and also because they are some of the elements that I see displayed by my mother who has chronic heart failure though on a mild scale. She is not in these statistics yet of being depressed and hopeless because of the frequent hospitalizations and duration of hospital stay which would lead to a higher mortality rate. Thank God that I am there to keep an eye on her and support her. She is on a regimen of medications for the heart, blood pressure and water pill. She has to perform minimum to moderate exercises as she can tolerate and monitor her urine output. She has to adjust and make some lifestyle changes which we all have to follow her to adjust to make it easy on her and myself when we cook. Like monitoring the salt and water intake and output as well as the color of the urine. Thank God that she is not living alone, I am there to support her. Also, research notes that the symptoms of HF and depression overlap, so it is difficult to pinpoint the cause of the symptom with a depression screening. The two conditions have similar symptoms which include weakness, reduced physical activity, lack of energy, weight gain or loss, sleep pattern changes and cognitive decrease or concentration. It is noted that exercise therapy is safe for the chronic HF patients because it helps to decrease the symptoms of depression and increase their quality of life and there is no medication drug-drug interaction (Wilhelm, Davis, Sharpe, & Waters, 2022).
Wilhelm, E. A., Davis, L. L., Sharpe, L., & Waters, S. (2022). Assess and address: Screening and management of depression in patients with chronic heart failure. Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, 34(5), 769-779. https://doi.org/10.1097/jxx.0000000000000701
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