Depression Sufferers 3x More Likely to Have Anxiety
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What if depression and anxiety could be seen as a color on your skin? (Photo: Photomish Dan) .
This is our biggest study yet.
Almost 1,000 people came together to report on their experience with depression and/or anxiety.
Having post-partum depression myself after both of my girls were born, I got a taste of how devastating this condition can be.
But add anxiety on top of it, and it’s a double hit to mood, functioning, and quality of life.
Today’s announcement is that we found a strong association between Depression and Anxiety, which independent studies published in established journals also confirm. In graphical form:
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CureTogether members who report Depression are 3x more likely to report Anxiety than members with no Depression. This comes from a study of 953 people sharing data online for the past year.
For details on this finding and how it matches up with other studies, read on…
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Details of the CureTogether Depression-Anxiety Finding
Among 677 people reporting Depression in this study, 602 (88.9%) reported also having Anxiety, and the remaining 75 specifically reported not having Anxiety.
Among 276 people reporting “No Depression” in this study, 93 (33.7%) reported having Anxiety, and the remaining 183 people specifically reported not having Anxiety.
This 88.9% vs. 33.7% difference represents a statistically significant relative risk of 2.6, with a 99% confidence interval of 2.2 – 3.1.
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Other Depression-Anxiety Research
People of all ages are affected.
The importance of this finding is that using only self-reported data, we have found an association between depression and anxiety that has previously been explored only in clinical studies such as the following:
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1. More than half of older adults living in communities experience both anxiety and depression – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19700950
2. Comorbidity of anxiety and depression occurs twice as frequently in women as men – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14618550
3. Anxiety and depression are also frequently comorbid with other conditions – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19533486
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Self-Reported Data at CureTogether
CureTogether has been called “Yelp for health.” It is a collaboration of people from around the world volunteering to solve real problems in chronic conditions.
People self-report and rate symptoms and treatments for over 410 conditions. The top conditions at CureTogether are depression, anxiety, migraine, back pain, and vulvodynia.
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Take a peek at the top-rated:
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July 6th, 2010 at 11:35 pm
Well researched number of people with depression. With environmental factors: Trauma and stressful events, such as abuse, the death of a loved one, divorce, changing jobs or schools, may lead to Depression. It also may become worse during periods of stress. The use of and withdrawal from addictive substances, including alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine, can also worsen anxiety.