Anxiety disorders – Epidemiology and burden

Anxiety disorders are among the most common types of mental disorder; however, due to methodological differences, estimates of the prevalence of anxiety disorders in populations around the globe vary widely across large-scale studies.¹ During late adolescence and in early…

The prevalence of most mental disorders is approximately 2–3 times higher in women than in men, except for substance use disorders, which are approximately 3 times more common in men than in women, and psychotic disorders.¹

Anxiety disorders have the highest 1-year preval…

In a meta-analysis of 24 epidemiological studies of anxiety disorders, the estimated mean age of onset for anxiety disorders was 21.3 years.¹ As evidenced by the nonoverlapping confidence intervals of their estimates, separation anxiety disorder, specific phobia, and soci…

Environmental factors that may consistently influence the risk of developing anxiety disorders throughout childhood include stressful life events and parenting practices, such as childhood trauma, separation from attachment figures, and forms of overprotective child-reari…

The ratio of 1-year prevalence to lifetime prevalence is an indirect indicator of disorder persistence.² It is relatively high for most anxiety disorders, suggesting they are chronic and recurrent.¹ Among patients with only one anxiety disorder, remission rates after 2 ye…

While the age of onset for generalized anxiety disorder tends to occur earlier in high-income countries (median age of onset: 36 years) compared with middle and low-income countries (median age of onset: 43 years for both).¹ Generalized anxiety disorder tends to be more p…

Lifetime comorbidity with other mental health disorders in people with lifetime panic disorder (PD) is ~80%; comorbidity levels are particularly high for other anxiety disorders (63%).¹ Onset of PD usually occurs following the onset of a comorbid disorder.¹

Reference:

1. de…

Social anxiety disorder is persistent across all countries, with a global ratio of 1-year prevalence to lifetime prevalence of 60.2%.¹

Reference:

1. Stein DJ, Lim CCW, Roest AM, et al. The cross-national epidemiology of social anxiety disorder: data from the World Mental He…

As highlighted on the slide, anxiety disorders are often comorbid with other mental disorders: ~60% of patients with one anxiety disorder have at least one other comorbid anxiety or depressive disorder,^1,2 and ~30% of individuals have three or more of these disorders.^1,2

Social anxiety disorder (SAD), panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) are commonly comorbid with depressive disorders.¹ Anxiety disorders (particularly SAD) usually precede depressive disorders; the onset of anxiety disorders (especially GAD) coincides with…

Multivariate logistic regression analyses of data from the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (N=1,783) showed that when depressive disorders preceded anxiety disorders, patients had a significantly shorter duration of symptoms (p<0.01), fewer fear symptoms (p<0.…

Additional factors that may contribute to the increase in the prevalence rates of anxiety disorders include:

• Changing family dynamics, where a decline in care and support of children by individuals other than their biological parents places a greater burden on parents, r…

The increase in 1-year prevalence of anxiety disorders observed over the 12 years between NEMESIS 2 and NEMESIS 3 studies remained statistically significant after controlling for differences in characteristics of the study populations.¹ A more pronounced increase in the 1…

Findings from a recent population-based Danish cohort study including 5,936,202 individuals aged 1–80 years living in Denmark between 2004 and 2021 showed growing incidence rates of anxiety-related disorders across birth cohorts among both sexes: the incidence rates of an…