New meta-analyses, the first ESC consensus document on mental health and heart disease and groundbreaking Lancet dataon antidepressant drugs show: Depression is an independent, quantifiable and treatable risk factor for cardiovascular death – and it is systematically underestimated in cardiology practice. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide; according to WHO data, depression is one of the leading causes of disability and years of life lost. Both diseases do not co-exist by chance: a meta-analysis published in World Psychiatry in October 2025 with 268 cohort studies and over 10 million depression patients puts the overall mortality risk at 2.1 times that of the general population – and shows that cardiovascular mortality is particularly prominent with a relative risk of 1.63 for natural causes of death. In November 2025, the European Heart Journal published the first ESC Clinical Consensus Statement on mental health and heart disease.
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