Gender differences in anxiety disorders and anxiety symptoms in adolescents.

TLDR

The study assessed gender differences in anxiety among 1,079 adolescents without a disorder, 95 recovered, and 47 current cases, using a broad range of psychosocial measures. Females were overrepresented among adolescents with current or recovered anxiety disorders, a pattern evident as early as age six, and gender differences in prevalence and symptom severity persisted even after adjusting for psychosocial factors.

Abstract

Gender differences in anxiety were examined in a large sample of adolescents that included 1,079 who had never met criteria for any disorder, 95 who had recovered from an anxiety disorder, and 47 who had a current anxiety disorder. Participants were examined on a wide array of psychosocial measures. There was a preponderance of females among current and recovered anxiety disorder cases, but not among those who had never experienced an anxiety disorder. The female preponderance emerges early in life, and retrospective data indicate that at age 6, females are already twice as likely to have experienced an anxiety disorder than are males. Psychosocial variables that were correlated with both anxiety and gender were identified. Statistically controlling for these variables did not eliminate the gender differences in prevalence or anxiety symptom means.