A Trial of Stress Reduction in the Secondary Prevention of Coronary Heart Disease in Blacks

The overall hypothesis of this study is that a cardiac rehabilitation program with meditation will be more effective than cardiac rehabilitation alone in improving blood flow through the diseased coronary arteries in African Americans. For this purpose, 56 African American men and women with coronary heart disease will be randomly assigned either to standard cardiac rehabilitation plus the Transcendental Meditation program or to standard cardiac rehabilitation alone. The treatment period will be 12 weeks in length.