dushyanta wrote:
@AndrewN- Could you please help me here?
Hello,
dushyanta. Since I have a lot of work to get to, I am afraid I must keep my response brief. You seem to be stuck on (D). I will restrict my analysis to just (B) and (D), then, in an effort to assist you and the larger community.
Quote:
(D) Depressed people are more likely to die of a heart attack than are people who do not suffer from depression.
I have said it before, and I will say it again: stick to
exactly what the passage says when looking to size up an answer choice. On harder questions especially, you may slide into making assumptions more easily, and these can provide you a false sense of comfort. The research mentioned in the passage concerns a subset of people,
patients hospitalized for heart attack experiences. We cannot make any comment on
depressed people at large (i.e. those who have not experienced a heart attack). Moreover, the research states that
depressed patients [hospitalized for heart attack experiences] are... three times as likely to die from a future attack or other heart-related conditions. This information provides a two-pronged target for debate. First, (D) can be interpreted as saying that people suffering from depression are more likely to die of a
first-time heart attack than are others; second, the passage does not restrict
future cardiac events to heart attacks, allowing for
other heart-related conditions to kill off patients instead. For all of these reasons, we cannot get behind (D).
Quote:
If a patient needs to be re-hospitalised for a heart related problem within a year of his earlier heat attack, it is very likely that he may be suffering from depression.
The timeline here fits verbatim with the information provided in the passage:
within a year. So, too, does the re-hospitalization. (It is not a first-time cardiac episode.) Granted,
heat attack needs to be
heart attack instead, and
very likely is vague and debatable, but the passage spells out that among patients
hospitalized for heart attack... the depressed patients are 55 percent more likely than other heart attack patients to need hospital care for a heart problem again within a year. I would not cogitate here and come up with numbers to try to back up my answer; rather, I would
yellow light this option as one that looked plausible, one that fell in line with the given information, and see if I could find easier targets in other answers. In this case, this is the exact process that eventually led me to (B) as the best answer of the bunch.
I hope that helps. Thank you for thinking to ask me about this tough question.
- Andrew
_________________
I am no longer contributing to GMAT Club. Please request an active Expert or a peer review if you have questions.