Women More Prone to Anxiety Than Men, Review Finds

Women More Prone to Anxiety Than Men, Review Finds

Westerners also wrestle with the condition more than people in other parts of the world

WebMD News from HealthDay

By Steven Reinberg

HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, June 6, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- Struggling with anxiety? Then odds are you're a woman and you live in either North America or Western Europe.

That's the conclusion of a new British study that found that women are twice as likely to suffer from anxiety as men.

Moreover, people in North America and Western Europe are more prone to anxiety disorders than those from other parts of the world. In North America, nearly eight of 100 people suffer from anxiety -- the most in the world. In East Asia, it's fewer than three in 100 -- the lowest, the review authors noted.

"Anxiety is important and shouldn't be overlooked," said lead researcher Olivia Remes, who's with the department of public health and primary care at the University of Cambridge's Strangeways Research Laboratory. "Sometimes people think that anxiety is just a part of their personality or that there's nothing they can do about it, but there is."

Anxiety disorders are characterized by excessive worry, fear and avoidance of potentially stressful situations, such as social gatherings.

"There are treatments, including psychological treatments and medication, and other things people can do to help their mental health, such as physical activity, meditation and yoga," Remes said.

For the review, Remes and her colleagues looked at more than 1,200 previously published studies about anxiety, and focused on 48 of them.

The investigators found that from 1990 to 2010, the overall number of people with an anxiety disorder remained about the same -- approximately four out of every 100.

Women were nearly twice as likely as men to have an anxiety disorder (9 percent). And as many as 10 percent of men and women under 35 had an anxiety disorder, the researchers found.

It's not known why women seem more prone to anxiety, but it could be differences in brain chemistry between the two genders, Remes suggested.

Women are also more likely to suffer from other mental health problems, such as depression, she said. In addition, men may also be less likely to report mental health problems.

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