Differences in anxiety, worry, and perceived stress among naturally cycling women and oral contraceptives users: a cross-sectional study investigating the role of contraceptive types

Abstract

The goal of our study was to test whether the types of OC affect the link between anxiety and its main maintenance factors: worry and perceived stress. Women are particularly at risk of being affected by excessive worrying, a core component of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and they are twice as likely as men to suffer from GAD. The literature suggests that gonadal hormones and types of oral contraceptives (OC) should be taken into account when exploring anxiety disorders in women, but the precise mechanism of this link remains understudied. We performed an observational cross-sectional study on a sample of 908 women, including 499 women naturally cycling (NC) and 409 taking OC (277 in the anti-androgenic group, 132 in the androgenic group). The participants filled in a battery of online questionnaires. Anxiety positively correlated with worry and perceived stress in the whole sample and in the three groups: androgenic OC, anti-androgenic OC, and NC. There was no significant difference between the groups on all the variables apart from the age of the participants. However, we found that women taking anti-androgenic OC had significantly higher levels of worry than NC women (after controlling for stress and age). The differences in OC types should be taken into account in future studies which might also lead to a better choice of OC based on women’s individual needs.