Women of all ages and younger men with anxiety or depression more likely to develop chronic illnesses, research says
Even in the three age groups of 20, 40, and 60, women in their 20s, who had both anxiety and depression, were at the highest risk of developing chronic illnesses, with an increased risk of over 61% as compared to participants without either mental disorder.
You may indeed feel sad about being sick or tired, but why the tears? (Source: Pixabay) A retrospective study titled Association of Depression and Anxiety With the Accumulation of Chronic Conditions, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, found that women of all ages and younger men with anxiety and depression are more likely to develop certain chronic illnesses. The research analysed the health data of 40,360 adults from Olmsted County in Minnesota, from the Rochester Epidemiology Project medical records-linkage system.
For the research, the participants were split into three age groups of 20, 40, and 60 years old and further divided into four groups of those with anxiety; depression; anxiety and depression; and, neither anxiety nor depression. Compared to the participants who didn’t have either anxiety or depression, women in all three age groups and men in their 20s who had either depression or anxiety and depression were at a much higher risk of developing a chronic condition. In fact, 15 of them, some of which are hypertension, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and most cancers.
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