Neuroscience
A quick internet search for book titles hints at the scale of the market in helping people become less anxious: ‘Overcome anxiety’…; ’Calming your anxious mind’…; ’What to do when you worry too much’…; ’Power over panic’ and on and on they go. But hang on a minute, it’s a dangerous world out there – what if being anxious is actually a sensible approach for staying alive?
Enter William Lee at the Institute of Psychiatry and colleagues, who used data from the Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development (MRC NSHD) to find out whether anxious people have fewer fatal accidents.
Using the survey to follow the fortunes of 5,362 people born in 1946, the researchers found that those individuals who had higher anxiety – as determined by the opinion of their school teacher when they were 13 – were significantly less likely to die in accidental circumstances before they were 25 (only 0.1 per cent of them did) than were non-anxious people (0.72 per cent of them did). Similar trends were observed when anxiety was measured using the teachers’ anxiety judgments when the sample were 15-years-old, or using the sample’s own completion of a neuroticism questionnaire when they were 16. By contrast, anxiety had no association with the number of non-accidental (e.g. illness-related) deaths before 25. “Our findings show, for the first time in a representative sample of humans, a relatively strong protective effect of trait anxiety”, the researchers said.
It’s not all good news for anxious people though. After the age of 25 they started to show higher mortality rates than calmer types thanks to increased illness-related deaths.
“Our results suggest there are survival benefits of increased trait anxiety in early adult life, but these may be balanced by corresponding survival deficits in later life associated with medical problems”, the researchers said.
___________________________________
Lee, W.E., Wadsworth, M.E.J. & Hotop, M. (2006). The protective role of trait anxiety: a longitunidal cohort study. Psychological Medicine, 36, 345-351.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Don't worry, anxiety has its benefits
A quick internet search for book titles hints at the scale of the market in helping people become less anxious: ‘Overcome anxiety’…; ’Calming your anxious mind’…; ’What to do when you worry too much’…; ’Power over panic’ and on and on they go. But hang on a minute, it’s a dangerous world out there – what if being anxious is actually a sensible approach for staying alive?Enter William Lee at the Institute of Psychiatry and colleagues, who used data from the Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development (MRC NSHD) to find out whether anxious people have fewer fatal accidents.
Using the survey to follow the fortunes of 5,362 people born in 1946, the researchers found that those individuals who had higher anxiety – as determined by the opinion of their school teacher when they were 13 – were significantly less likely to die in accidental circumstances before they were 25 (only 0.1 per cent of them did) than were non-anxious people (0.72 per cent of them did). Similar trends were observed when anxiety was measured using the teachers’ anxiety judgments when the sample were 15-years-old, or using the sample’s own completion of a neuroticism questionnaire when they were 16. By contrast, anxiety had no association with the number of non-accidental (e.g. illness-related) deaths before 25. “Our findings show, for the first time in a representative sample of humans, a relatively strong protective effect of trait anxiety”, the researchers said.
It’s not all good news for anxious people though. After the age of 25 they started to show higher mortality rates than calmer types thanks to increased illness-related deaths.
“Our results suggest there are survival benefits of increased trait anxiety in early adult life, but these may be balanced by corresponding survival deficits in later life associated with medical problems”, the researchers said.
___________________________________
Lee, W.E., Wadsworth, M.E.J. & Hotop, M. (2006). The protective role of trait anxiety: a longitunidal cohort study. Psychological Medicine, 36, 345-351.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- Is Being A Worrier A Sign Of Intelligence?
We usually see worry as a bad thing. It feels unpleasant, like a snake coiling in the pit of your stomach. And worriers are often considered weak links in a team - negative influences who lack confidence. But of course, anxiety has a useful function....
- The 'smell' Of Other People's Anxiety Makes Us Take More Risks
When people are anxious they release a chemical signal that's detectable on a subconscious level by those close to them. That's the implication of a new study that collected sweat from people as they completed a high-rope obstacle course, and...
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You’ve probably been there – waiting for an interview, palms sweaty, heartbeat pounding… or perhaps not, maybe you don’t tend to hear your heartbeat. It’s increasingly being recognised that people differ in how much attention they pay to their...
- Detecting Psychological Distress From Where A Patient Sits
Patients suffering from depression or anxiety are more likely to choose to sit to their left when visiting the GP, an observation that has implications for the detection of psychological distress among patients. That’s according to a study by Dr. Peter...
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