Depressed Mood, Perceived Health Competence and Health Behaviors: aCross-Sectional Mediation Study in Outpatients with Coronary Heart Disease

Background Identifying potential mechanisms that link depressed mood with worse health behaviors is important given the prevalence of depressed mood in patients with coronary heart disease (CHD) and its relationship with subsequent mortality. Perceived health competence is an individual’s confidence in his/her ability to successfully engineer solutions to achieve health goals and may explain how depressed mood affects multiple health behaviors.