Quality of life in the anxiety disorders: A meta-analytic review

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Abstract

There has been significant interest in the impact of anxiety disorders on quality of life. In this meta-analytic review, we empirically evaluate differences in quality of life between patients with anxiety disorders and nonclinical controls. Thirty-two patient samples from 23 separate studies (N = 2892) were included in the analysis. The results yielded a large effect size indicating poorer quality of life among anxiety disorder patients vs. controls and this effect was observed across all anxiety disorders. Compared to control samples, no anxiety disorder diagnosis was associated with significantly poorer overall quality of life than was any other anxiety disorder diagnosis. Examination of specific domains of QOL suggests that impairments may be particularly prominent among patients with post-traumatic stress disorder. QOL domains of mental health and social functioning were associated with the highest levels of impairment among anxiety disorder patients. These findings are discussed in the context of future research on the assessment of quality of life in the anxiety disorders.

Section snippets

Selection of studies

We identified appropriate studies by conducting searches in both PsychINFO and PubMed in June, 2006. We conducted 6 separate searches in each database and limited the search criteria to words that appeared in the title of the study. The searches were: 1) “social phobia” and “quality of life,” 2) “panic disorder” and “quality of life,” 3) “post-traumatic” and “quality of life”; “PTSD” and “quality of life,” 4) “generalized anxiety” and “quality of life,” 5) “obsessive compulsive” and “quality of

Preliminary analyses

Across patient samples, 61.1% were female, with a mean age of 39.70 (SD = 9.75) years; across control samples, 58.8% were female, with a mean age of 40.32 (SD = 8.80) years. Neither age nor sex differed between patient and control samples, (p's > 05). QOL effect size estimates did not correlate significantly with the mean age of the patient sample (r = 0.29, p = .148) or the percentage of female participants in the patient sample (r =  0.27, p = .145).

Effect size estimates are depicted in Table 2. Across all

Discussion

There has been growing research interest on the impact of anxiety disorders on QOL. Epidemiological surveys, clinical studies, and qualitative literature reviews suggest that QOL impairments reported by anxiety disorder patients are substantial and may be comparable to QOL impairments observed in other psychiatric conditions (, Mendlowicz and Stein, 2000). The present meta-analytic investigation examined the impact of anxiety disorders on QOL by comparing anxiety disorder patients with

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