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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Who worries most?
— worry prevalence and patterns across the lifespan | | Author(s) | Daniela C Goncalves, Gerard J Byrne |
| Journal title | International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 28, no 1, January 2013 |
| Publisher | Wiley-Blackwell, January 2013 |
| Pages | pp 41-49 |
| Source | www.orangejournal.org |
| Keywords | Anxiety ; Life span ; Young adults [20-25] ; Mature adults ; Age groups [elderly]. |
| Annotation | The purpose of this study was to examine the age-related worry patterns in a population-based sample of self-reported worriers. A sample of participants was extracted from the National Survey of Mental Health and Well-Being, a multistage stratified epidemiological survey of mental health conducted in Australia in 2007. Participants were surveyed using the Composite International Diagnostic Interview. All 3,735 participants who reported a period of pervasive worry were included in this study. Their ages ranged from 16-85 years of age, and 61% were female. Study results showed that compared with younger adults, older adults reported fewer worries and a lower likelihood of worrying about interpersonal relations, health, work and miscellaneous topics, but a higher likelihood of worrying about the health and welfare of loved ones after adjusting for socio-demographic and clinical factors. Similar patterns were seen in older persons with and without a lifetime history of generalised anxiety disorder as diagnosed by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The findings indicated an overall decrease in worry count with advancing age, as well as a developmental distribution of worry content, and a quantitative but not qualitative distinction between normal and pathological worriers. Overall these findings might contribute to the understanding of worry processes and the phenomenology of generalised anxiety disorder in older cohorts. (JL). |
| Accession Number | CPA-121214261 A |
| Classmark | ENP: BG6: SD6: SDM: BB |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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