German Anxiety Barometer-Clinical and Everyday-Life Anxieties in the General Population.

Dirk Adolph,Jürgen Margraf,Silvia Schneider

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01344

Abstract

The objective of this study was to test a time-efficient screening instrument to assess clinically relevant and everyday-life (e.g., economic, political, personal) anxieties. Furthermore, factors influencing these anxieties, correlations between clinical and everyday anxieties and, for the first time, anxiety during different stages of life were assessed in a representative sample of the general population (N = 2229). Around 30% of the respondents manifested at least one disorder-specific key symptom within 1 year (women > men), 8% reported severe anxiety symptoms. Two thirds of respondents reported minor everyday anxieties and 5% were strongly impaired, whereby persons with severe clinical symptoms were more frequently affected. A variety of potential influencing factors could be identified. These include, in addition to socioeconomic status, gender, general health, risk-taking, and leisure behavior, also some up to now little investigated possible protective factors, such as everyday-life mental activity. The observed effects are rather small, which, however, given the heterogeneity of the general population seems plausible. Although the correlative design of the study does not allow direct causal conclusions, it can, however, serve as a starting point for experimental intervention studies in the future. Together with time series from repeated representative surveys, we expect these data to provide a better understanding of the processes that underlie everyday-life and clinical anxieties.

Highlights

Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent mental disorders
Anxiety disorders occur most frequently in high-income countries, and in regions with current politico-military conflicts (Baxter et al, 2014). In both poor and rich countries, anxiety disorders are a major cause of disease-induced stress (“years of life lived with disability—YLDs”), ranking even higher than widely recognized widespread diseases, such as diabetes, chronic lung disease or arthrosis
Our data cannot provide conclusive evidence, the present results suggest that everyday-life anxieties and clinical anxieties may be present in an intensity continuum which at the clinical end, differentiates into various partial dimensions that are definable by their contents (c.f., for example Endler and Kocovski, 2001)

Summary

Introduction

Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent mental disorders. In Europe, their point prevalence is ∼10%, 1-year prevalence 14%, and lifetime prevalence up to 29% (Michael et al, 2007; Wittchen et al, 2011; Baxter et al, 2013). Anxiety disorders occur most frequently in high-income countries, and in regions with current politico-military conflicts (Baxter et al, 2014). In both poor and rich countries, anxiety disorders are a major cause of disease-induced stress (“years of life lived with disability—YLDs”), ranking even higher than widely recognized widespread diseases, such as diabetes, chronic lung disease or arthrosis. Anxiety disorders play a substantial role in public healthcare policy Despite their massive consequences and high chronicity, their treatment rate ranges only between 40 and 50% (Margraf and Poldrack, 2000; Wittchen and Jacobi, 2001; Lieb et al, 2003; Jacobi et al, 2004, 2014). Among the identified influencing factors are gender as well the professional and socioeconomic status: Women, unemployed persons, housewives or househusbands, those with less education or in a poor financial situation are more frequently affected (for an overview cf. Lieb et al, 2003)

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Discussion

Conclusion