Gender Differences in Anxiety Disorders: Prevalence, Course of Illness, Comorbidity and Burden of Illness

By C. McLean, Anu Asnaani, B. Litz, Stefan G. Hofmann. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 2011

2,284 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Women have consistently higher prevalence rates of anxiety disorders, but less is known about how gender affects age of onset, chronicity, comorbidity, and burden of illness. Gender differences in DSM-IV anxiety disorders were examined in a large sample of adults (N = 20,013) in the United States using data from the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Studies (CPES). The lifetime and 12-month male:female prevalence ratios of any anxiety disorder were 1:1.7 and 1:1.79, respectively. Women had higher rates of lifetime diagnosis for each of the anxiety disorders examined, except for social anxiety disorder which showed no gender difference in prevalence. No gender differences were observed in the age of onset and chronicity of the illness. However, women with a lifetime diagnosis of an anxiety disorder were more likely than men to also be diagnosed with another anxiety disorder, bulimia nervosa, and major depressive disorder. Furthermore, anxiety disorders were associated with a greater illness burden in women than in men, particularly among European American women and to some extend also among Hispanic women. These results suggest that anxiety disorders are not only more prevalent but also more disabling in women than in men.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b076c6bfce6022a80cf11d1dd5633c481783fc97

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Clinical Psychology

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Obtaining Reliable Human Ratings of Valence, Arousal, and Dominance for 20,000 English Words (2018, background): “than men (Bao and Swaab, 2011; Lewinsohn et al., 1998; McLean et al., 2011; Johnson et al., 2006; Chmielewski et al., 1995).”
Mathematics Anxiety: What Have We Learned in 60 Years? (2016, background): “Many studies indicate that females tend to show higher levels of trait anxiety and the closely related trait of Neuroticism than males (e.g., Feingold, 1994; Costa et al., 2001; Chapman et al., 2007) and show higher prevalence of clinical anxiety disorders (McLean et al., 2011).”
Canadian clinical practice guidelines for the management of anxiety, posttraumatic stress and obsessive-compulsive disorders (2014, background): “• Family history of anxiety [33] • Personal history of anxiety or mood disorder [34,35] • Childhood stressful life events or trauma [36,37] • Being female [4,9] • Chronic medical illness [34,40] • Behavioral inhibition [41,42] Katzman et al.”
Anxiety and depression in adults with autism spectrum disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis (2018, background): “For example, to explore whether rates of depression increase with age or, as suggested in the non-ASD literature, that prevalence of anxiety is higher in females than males (McLean et al., 2011).”
Inflammation in Fear- and Anxiety-Based Disorders: PTSD, GAD, and Beyond (2017, background): “For example, there is a clear sex difference in the prevalence of PTSD and other fear- and anxiety-based disorders (Kessler et al, 1995; McLean et al, 2011), and yet there is a paucity of data explaining the etiology of this sex difference.”
Transgender and anxiety: A comparative study between transgender people and the general population (2017, background): “8%), which is in keeping with the literature on gender differences in anxiety disorders, if the pattern of birth gender is followed (McLean et al., 2011).”
Parental Anxiety, Parenting Behavior, and Infant Anxiety: Differential Associations for Fathers and Mothers (2015, result): “Fathers and mothers also did not differ in their level of SAD symptoms, which is in accordance with the finding that there is no gender difference in prevalence of SAD (e.g., McLean et al. 2011).”