Emotional inteligence

patients to go elsewhere for care, while pleasing ones
translate into loyalty.
Finally, medical ethics may demand such an approach.
An editorial in the Journal of the American
Medical Association, commenting on a report that depression
increases five fold the likelihood of dying after
being treated for a heart attack, notes: "[T]he clear
demonstration that psychological factors like depression
and social isolation distinguish the coronary heart disease
patients at highest risk means it would be unethical
not to start trying to treat these factors." 56
If the findings on emotions and health mean anything,
it is that medical care that neglects how people feel as
they battle a chronic or severe disease is no longer adequate.
It is time for medicine to take more methodical
advantage of the link between emotion and health. What
is now the exception could—and should—be part of the
mainstream, so that a more caring medicine is available
to us all. At the least it would make medicine more humane.
And, for some, it could speed the course of recovery.
"Compassion," as one patient put it in an open letter
to his surgeon, "is not mere hand holding. It is good
medicine." 57 360/661