ArticleBMC psychiatry2023
The risk of all-cause mortality associated with anxiety: a retrospective cohort study using 'The Health Improvement Network' database.
Article in BMC psychiatry, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Methylome-wide association study in blood suggests cell type-specific relationships between DNA methylation and lifetime anxiety.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Risk of all-cause and cause-specific mortality, and suicide attempt in people with anxiety and stress-related disorders: a systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression analysis of 165 studies.World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · 2026Article
- All-cause and cause-specific mortality in social anxiety disorder: a matched cohort and sibling cohort study.Epidemiology and psychiatric sciences · 2026Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundAnxiety is a prevalent condition with a substantial associated burden of morbidity. Previous literature investigating effects of anxiety on mortality rates has found conflicting results. This is in part due to inadequate consideration of comorbid depression as a confounder and analysing sub-types of anxiety together. The objective of this study was to compare mortality risks in people diagnosed with anxiety.
methodsWe undertook a retrospective cohort study using the 'The Health Improvement Network' database (a UK primary care dataset) between 1st January 2005 to 1st January 2018. 345 903 patients with anxiety (exposed group) were matched to 691 449 unexposed patients. Cox regression analyses were used to adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) for mortality risk.
resultsDuring the study period 18 962 patients (5·5%) died in the exposed group compared to 32 288 (4·7%) in the unexposed group. This translated into a crude HR for all of 1·14 (95% CI 1·12 - 1·16), which remained significant after adjustment for key co-variates (including depression) giving a final HR of 1·05 (95% CI 1·03 - 1·07). When broken down by sub-type of anxiety (10·3% (35, 581) had phobias, 82·7% (385,882) has 'other' types, and 7·0% (24,262) had stress related anxiety) there were markedly different effect sizes. The adjusted model for the stress-related anxiety sub-type demonstrated a HR of 0·88 (95% CI 0·80 - 0·97). Conversely, the HR was increased in 'other' sub-types to 1·07 (95% CI 1·05 - 1·09) and non-significant in phobia types of anxiety.
conclusionA complex relationship is found between anxiety and mortality. The presence of anxiety slightly increased the risk of death, but this risk varies depending on the type of anxiety diagnosed.
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