ABSTRACT
There is overwhelming convincing evidence linking psychosocial factors to outcome of patients with coronary heart disease. Thus, assessment of psychosocial variables should be an integrated part of risk stratification. To facilitate psychosocial assessment in clinical practice and to identify a subset of patients possibly benefitting from extended psychological measures, a new semistandardized interview instrument is presented, called LIPS ("Lübecker halbstandardisiertes Interview zum Psychosozialen Screening"). Beside the well-known and relevant domains social support, emotional stress/vital exhaustion, anxiety and depression, a score for the global psychosocial impairment can be documented. LIPS requires no specialized psychological training, its time requirement is five to ten minutes and it is easily integrated into routine physical and psychosocial assessment. The presentation includes the original instrument in addition to its validation on standardized self-administered questionnaires.
