Comparing anxiety and depression to obesity and smoking as predictors of major medical illnesses and somatic symptoms.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Anxiety and depression predict poor physical health longitudinally, but are neglected in primary care settings compared to other risk factors such as obesity and smoking. Further, anxiety has been less commonly studied than depression, and whether anxiety has unique predictive effects for physical health is unknown. We compared anxiety and depression to obesity and smoking as predictors of physical health indices and examined unique predictive effects of anxiety and depression.

Method

Using data from the Health and Retirement study, a US population-based cohort study of older adults, we tested longitudinal associations of anxiety and depression symptoms with onset of self-reported physical health indices (N = 15,418; M age = 68). Medical illnesses (heart disease, s

SUBMITTER: Niles AN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6592048 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature