Question

You may notice that most of the anxiety disorders are diagnosed in women, especially the phobias. Why the gender imbalance?

Answer 1

Anxiety thus is a reaction on something that scares you which leads to evasive behavior or intense emotions in case the fear has to be confronted. Anxiety is a natural mechanism, which helped us to survive in prehistoric times. As opposed to other psychological mechanisms, anxiety is something we were actually born with.

-         With the exception of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), women have twice the risk for most anxiety disorders as men. Women have consistently higher prevalence rates of anxiety disorders, but less is known about how gender affects age of onset, chronicity, comorbidity, and burden of illness.

-         Women are almost twice as likely as men to experience anxiety. This gender gap might be a result of differences in brain chemistry and hormonal fluctuations, or how men and women tend to cope with stress differently.

-         Compared with the general population, the prevalence of obsessive-compulsive disorder was found to be double in pregnant women and slightly higher in postpartum women.

By these, we can say that women are more likely to get diagnosed for anxiety disorder than men. So, these are the reasons why there is gender imbalance shown.