Anxiety disorders in women

Abstract

Anxiety is a common human experience, and varies in depth and intensity. The experience most typically occurs in response to life stressors and may be temporary. However, many people experience anxiety symptoms that comprise a diagnosable mental illness. Individuals with an anxiety disorder are functionally impaired by the condition that is beyond a reasonable temporary response to trauma, stress or danger. Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent and persist, frequently with periods of remission and relapse across the life-course (Yonkers, 2003). They are universally reported to be more common in women than men. For example, Australian data from the Australian Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing, conducted in 2007, estimated the weighted 12-month prevalence of any anxiety disorder, diagnosable using DSM-IV criteria, as 14.6% for women and 8.9% for men (McEvoy et al., 2011). The US National Comorbidity Survey (NCS), a community prevalence study, found the following risk factors to be associated with a lifetime anxiety disorder: lower income, less education, living in the northeast and female sex. The likelihood of developing an anxiety disorder was 85% higher in women than men. In a prospective, longitudinal, population-based study of 643 women, psychosocial variables were examined to evaluate whether it was possible to predict the onset of a new anxiety disorder or the recurrence of an existing disorder. The presence of anxiety disorders was assessed every 6 months over a 3-year period, using the Structured Clinical Interview for the Diagnostic Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (SCID) and significant predictors of anxiety were found to include a history of anxiety, increased anxiety sensitivity (meaning the fear of anxiety-related sensations) and increased neuroticism (Calkins et al., 2009). The prevalence over 12 months of specific types of anxiety disorders in women (Kessler et al., 2012) were recorded as follows: specific phobia 12.1%, social phobia 7.4%, post-traumatic stress disorder 3.7%, generalized anxiety disorder 2.0%, separation anxiety disorder 1.2%, panic disorder 2.4%, agoraphobia 1.7%, and obsessive-compulsive disorder 1.2%. Anxiety disorders often exist comorbidly with major depressive disorder and the lifetime prevalence in a sample of (n=1970) Chinese patients surveyed to assess the association between major depressive disorder and comorbid anxiety disorders found the lifetime prevalence rate for any type of comorbid anxiety disorder was 60%, which is consistent with findings from European and American studies (Li et al., 2012).