Background Depression and anxiety are common in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD). Although depression clearly has been associated with mortality in this population, the relationship ...between anxiety and mortality is less clear. Accordingly, we performed a series of meta-analyses to (1) examine the relationship between anxiety and mortality in patients with established CAD and (2) determine if this relationship differs in patients with stable CAD compared to those who have just had an acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Methods and results Systematic literature searches identified 44 articles (total N = 30,527) evaluating the prospective relationship between anxiety and mortality in individuals with established CAD. A series of 8 adjusted and unadjusted meta-analyses were performed to examine this relationship across all patients, with sensitivity analyses completed in post-ACS and stable CAD cohorts. In unadjusted analyses, anxiety was associated with a moderate increase in mortality risk (odds ratio 1.21 per SD increase in anxiety). However, when adjusting for covariates, nearly all associations became nonsignificant. In sensitivity analyses, anxiety was associated with an increased risk of poor outcomes in the stable CAD—but not post-ACS—cohort. Conclusions These analyses confirm that anxiety is associated with increased risk of mortality in patients with CAD; however, this relationship is not as strong as that of depression and may be explained partly by other clinical factors. If anxiety screening is performed, it should be performed during a period of clinical stability and should target anxiety disorders rather than anxiety symptoms alone.
Mood and behaviour are thought to be under considerable influence of the seasons, but evidence is not unequivocal. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether mood and affect are related to ...the seasons, and what is the role of neuroticism in this association. In a national internet-based crowdsourcing project in the Dutch general population, individuals were invited to assess themselves on several domains of mental health. ANCOVA was used to test for differences between the seasons in mean scores on the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology (QIDS). Within-subject seasonal differences were tested as well, in a subgroup that completed the PANAS twice. The role of neuroticism as a potential moderator of seasonality was examined. Participants (n = 5,282) scored significantly higher on positive affect (PANAS) and lower on depressive symptoms (QIDS) in spring compared to summer, autumn and winter. They also scored significantly lower on negative affect in spring compared to autumn. Effect sizes were small or very small. Neuroticism moderated the effect of the seasons, with only participants higher on neuroticism showing seasonality. There was no within-subject seasonal effect for participants who completed the questionnaires twice (n = 503), nor was neuroticism a significant moderator of this within-subjects effect. The findings of this study in a general population sample participating in an online crowdsourcing study do not support the widespread belief that seasons influence mood to a great extent. For, as far as the seasons did influence mood, this only applied to highly neurotic participants and not to low-neurotic participants. The underlying mechanism of cognitive attribution may explain the perceived relation between seasonality and neuroticism.
The purpose of this study was to assess the association between anxiety and risk of coronary heart disease (CHD).
Less research has focused on the association of anxiety with incident CHD in contrast ...to other negative emotions, such as depression.
A meta-analysis of references derived from PubMed, EMBASE, and PsycINFO (1980 to May 2009) was performed without language restrictions. End points were cardiac death, myocardial infarction (MI), and cardiac events. The authors selected prospective studies of (nonpsychiatric) cohorts of initially healthy persons in which anxiety was assessed at baseline.
Twenty studies reporting on incident CHD comprised 249,846 persons with a mean follow-up period of 11.2 years. Anxious persons were at risk of CHD (hazard ratio HR random: 1.26; 95% confidence interval CI: 1.15 to 1.38; p < 0.0001) and cardiac death (HR: 1.48; 95% CI: 1.14 to 1.92; p = 0.003), independent of demographic variables, biological risk factors, and health behaviors. There was a nonsignificant trend for an association between anxiety and nonfatal MI (HR: 1.43; 95% CI: 0.85 to 2.40; p = 0.180). Subgroup analyses did not show any significant differences regarding study characteristics, with significant associations for different types of anxiety, short- and long-term follow-up, and both men and women.
Anxiety seemed to be an independent risk factor for incident CHD and cardiac mortality. Future research should examine the association between anxiety and CHD with valid and reliable anxiety measures and focus on the mechanisms through which anxiety might affect CHD.
An update of the chapter on Mental, Behavioral and Neurodevelopmental Disorders in the International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) is of great interest around the ...world. The recent approval of the 11th Revision of the ICD (ICD-11) by the World Health Organization (WHO) raises broad questions about the status of nosology of mental disorders as a whole as well as more focused questions regarding changes to the diagnostic guidelines for specific conditions and the implications of these changes for practice and research. This Forum brings together a broad range of experts to reflect on key changes and controversies in the ICD-11 classification of mental disorders. Taken together, there is consensus that the WHO's focus on global applicability and clinical utility in developing the diagnostic guidelines for this chapter will maximize the likelihood that it will be adopted by mental health professionals and administrators. This focus is also expected to enhance the application of the guidelines in non-specialist settings and their usefulness for scaling up evidence-based interventions. The new mental disorders classification in ICD-11 and its accompanying diagnostic guidelines therefore represent an important, albeit iterative, advance for the field.
Few studies have addressed the relationship between generalised anxiety disorder and cardiovascular prognosis using a diagnostic interview.
To assess the association between generalised anxiety ...disorder and adverse outcomes in patients with myocardial infarction.
Patients with acute myocardial infarction (n = 438) were recruited between 1997 and 2000 and were followed up until 2007. Current generalised anxiety disorder and post-myocardial infarction depression were assessed with the Composite International Diagnostic Interview. The end-point consisted of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular-related readmissions.
During the follow-up period, 198 patients had an adverse event. Generalised anxiety disorder was associated with an increased rate of adverse events after adjustment for age and gender (hazard ratio: 1.94; 95% confidence interval: 1.14-3.30; P = 0.01). Additional adjustment for measures of cardiac disease severity and depression did not change the results.
Generalised anxiety disorder was associated with an almost twofold increased risk of adverse outcomes independent demographic and clinical variables and depression.
Anxiety disorders are a common problem in adolescent mental health. Previous studies have investigated only a limited number of risk factors for the development of anxiety disorders concurrently. By ...investigating multiple factors simultaneously, a more complete understanding of the etiology of anxiety disorders can be reached. Therefore, we assessed preadolescent socio-demographic, familial, psychosocial, and biological factors and their association with the onset of anxiety disorders in adolescence. This study was conducted among 1584 Dutch participants of the TRacking Adolescents’ Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS). Potential risk factors were assessed at baseline (age 10–12), and included socio-demographic (sex, socioeconomic status), familial (parental anxiety and depression), psychosocial (childhood adversity, temperament), and biological (body mass index, heart rate, blood pressure, cortisol) variables. Anxiety disorders were assessed at about age 19 years through the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI). Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed with onset of anxiety disorder as a dependent variable and the above-mentioned putative risk factors as predictors. Of the total sample, 25.7% had a lifetime diagnosis of anxiety disorder at age 19 years. Anxiety disorders were twice as prevalent in girls as in boys. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that being female (OR = 2.38,
p
< .01), parental depression and anxiety (OR = 1.34,
p
= .04), temperamental frustration (OR = 1.31,
p
= .02) and low effortful control (OR = 0.76,
p
= .01) independently predicted anxiety disorders. We found no associations between biological factors and anxiety disorder. After exclusion of adolescents with an onset of anxiety disorder before age 12 years, being female was the only significant predictor of anxiety disorder. Being female was the strongest predictor for the onset of anxiety disorder. Psychological and parental psychopathology factors increased the risk of diagnosis of anxiety, but to a lesser extent. Biological factors (heart rate, blood pressure, cortisol, and BMI), at least as measured in the present study, are unlikely to be useful tools for anxiety prevention and intervention strategies.
Previous studies have suggested a bidirectional association between sleep problems and anxiety symptoms in adolescents. These studies used methods that do not separate between-person effects from ...within-person effects, and therefore their conclusions may not pertain to within-person mutual influences of sleep and anxiety. We examined bidirectional associations between sleep problems and anxiety during adolescence and young adulthood while differentiating between person effects from within-person effects.
Data came from the Dutch TRacking Adolescents' Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS), a prospective cohort study including six waves of data spanning 15 years. Young adolescents (N = 2230, mean age at baseline 11.1 years) were followed every 2–3 years until young adulthood (mean age 25.6 years). Sleep problems and anxiety symptoms were measured by the Youth Self-Report, Adult Self-Report and Nottingham Health Profile. Temporal associations between sleep and anxiety were investigated using the random intercept cross-lagged panel model.
Across individuals, sleep problems were significantly associated with (β = 0.60, p < 0.001). At the within-person level, there were significant cross–sectional associations between sleep problems and anxiety symptoms at all waves (β = 0.12–0.34, p < 0.001). In addition, poor sleep predicted greater anxiety symptoms between the first and second, and between the third and fourth assessment wave. The reverse association was not statistically significant.
Within-person associations between sleep problems and anxiety are considerably weaker than between-person associations. Yet, our findings tentatively suggest that poor sleep, especially during early and mid-adolescence, may precede anxiety symptoms, and that anxiety might be prevented by alleviating sleep problems in young adolescents.
•Sleep problems decreased while anxiety symptoms increased during the course of adolescence and young adulthood.•Across adolescence and young adulthood, participants who reported poor sleep tended to report high anxiety as well.•Sleep and anxiety were also associated with each other within individuals.•Sleep problems were likely to precede anxiety in early and mid-adolescence, but not in late adolescence and young adulthood. No effects were found in the opposite direction.•Tentatively, sleep-oriented interventions in early adolescence not only improve sleep, but also prevent the development of anxiety.
Individuals with mental disorders often develop comorbidity over time. Past studies of comorbidity have often restricted analyses to a subset of disorders and few studies have provided absolute risks ...of later comorbidity.
To undertake a comprehensive study of comorbidity within mental disorders, by providing temporally ordered age- and sex-specific pairwise estimates between the major groups of mental disorders, and to develop an interactive website to visualize all results and guide future research and clinical practice.
This population-based cohort study included all individuals born in Denmark between January 1, 1900, and December 31, 2015, and living in the country between January 1, 2000, and December 31, 2016. The analyses were conducted between June 2017 and May 2018.
Danish health registers were used to identify mental disorders, which were examined within the broad 10-level International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th Revision, subchapter groups (eg, codes F00-F09 and F10-F19). For each temporally ordered pair of disorders, overall and lagged hazard ratios and 95% CIs were calculated using Cox proportional hazards regression models. Absolute risks were estimated using competing risks survival analyses. Estimates for each sex were generated.
A total of 5 940 778 persons were included in this study (2 958 293 men and 2 982 485 women; mean SD age at beginning of follow-up, 32.1 25.4 years). They were followed up for 83.9 million person-years. All mental disorders were associated with an increased risk of all other mental disorders when adjusting for sex, age, and calendar time (hazard ratios ranging from 2.0 95% CI, 1.7-2.4 for prior intellectual disabilities and later eating disorders to 48.6 95% CI, 46.6-50.7 for prior developmental disorders and later intellectual disabilities). The hazard ratios were temporally patterned, with higher estimates during the first year after the onset of the first disorder, but with persistently elevated rates during the entire observation period. Some disorders were associated with substantial absolute risks of developing specific later disorders (eg, 30.6% 95% CI, 29.3%-32.0% of men and 38.4% 95% CI, 37.5%-39.4% of women with a diagnosis of mood disorders before age 20 years developed neurotic disorders within the following 5 years).
Comorbidity within mental disorders is pervasive, and the risk persists over time. This study provides disorder-, sex-, and age-specific relative and absolute risks of the comorbidity of mental disorders. Web-based interactive data visualization tools are provided for clinical utility.
Persons with mental disorders are at a higher risk than the general population for the subsequent development of certain medical conditions.
We used a population-based cohort from Danish national ...registries that included data on more than 5.9 million persons born in Denmark from 1900 through 2015 and followed them from 2000 through 2016, for a total of 83.9 million person-years. We assessed 10 broad types of mental disorders and 9 broad categories of medical conditions (which encompassed 31 specific conditions). We used Cox regression models to calculate overall hazard ratios and time-dependent hazard ratios for pairs of mental disorders and medical conditions, after adjustment for age, sex, calendar time, and previous mental disorders. Absolute risks were estimated with the use of competing-risks survival analyses.
A total of 698,874 of 5,940,299 persons (11.8%) were identified as having a mental disorder. The median age of the total population was 32.1 years at entry into the cohort and 48.7 years at the time of the last follow-up. Persons with a mental disorder had a higher risk than those without such disorders with respect to 76 of 90 pairs of mental disorders and medical conditions. The median hazard ratio for an association between a mental disorder and a medical condition was 1.37. The lowest hazard ratio was 0.82 for organic mental disorders and the broad category of cancer (95% confidence interval CI, 0.80 to 0.84), and the highest was 3.62 for eating disorders and urogenital conditions (95% CI, 3.11 to 4.22). Several specific pairs showed a reduced risk (e.g., schizophrenia and musculoskeletal conditions). Risks varied according to the time since the diagnosis of a mental disorder. The absolute risk of a medical condition within 15 years after a mental disorder was diagnosed varied from 0.6% for a urogenital condition among persons with a developmental disorder to 54.1% for a circulatory disorder among those with an organic mental disorder.
Most mental disorders were associated with an increased risk of a subsequent medical condition; hazard ratios ranged from 0.82 to 3.62 and varied according to the time since the diagnosis of the mental disorder. (Funded by the Danish National Research Foundation and others; COMO-GMC ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT03847753.).
•Association between social anxiety and affective or cognitive empathy is unclear.•Random-effects meta-analysis was performed for affective and cognitive empathy separately.•Small positive ...association between social anxiety and affective empathy.•Small negative association between clinical social anxiety and cognitive empathy.•Further research to clarify subgroup results (i.e., male, SAD) needed.
This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to clarify the association between social anxiety and affective (AE) and cognitive empathy (CE).
1442 studies from PsycINFO, Medline, and EMBASE (inception-January 2020) were systematically reviewed. Included studies (N = 48) either predicted variance in empathy using social anxiety scores or compared empathy scores between socially anxious individuals and a control group.
Social anxiety and AE were statistically significantly positively associated, k = 14, r = .103 (95%CI .003, .203), z = 2.03, p = .043. Sex (QM (2) = 18.79, p < .0001), and type of measures (QM (1 = 7.34, p = .007) moderated the association. Correlations were significant for male samples (rmale = .316, (95%CI .200, .432)) and studies using self-report measures (rself-report = .162 (95%CI .070, .254)). Overall, social anxiety and CE were not significantly associated, k = 52, r =-.021 (95%CI -.075, .034), z= -0.74, p = .459. Sample type moderated the association (QM (1) = 5.03, p < .0001). For clinical samples the association was negative (rclinical= -.112, (95%CI -.201, -.017).
There was evidence for a positive association between social anxiety and AE, but future studies are needed to verify the moderating roles of sex and type of measure. Besides, low CE might only hold for patients with SAD.