What happens to anxiety disorders in later life?

Abstract

Anxiety disorders decline in prevalence with advancing age but remain more common than depressive disorders. They are often of late-onset and there is frequent comorbidity with depressive disorders and physical illness. While anxiety disorders in older people are likely to respond to the same non-pharmacological interventions that have been shown to work in younger people, there is currently little formal evidence of this. Although there is some evidence that the non-benzodiazepine anxiolytic medication, buspirone, is effective against late life anxiety symptoms, clinical trials in older people with rigorously diagnosed anxiety disorders are needed. An anxiety scale with demonstrated reliability and validity in older people is needed for screening for pathological anxiety and for measuring change in older patients undergoing treatment for anxiety disorders.

Keywords

• Anxiety disorders
• Aged
• Panic
• Agoraphobia
• Phobia, social
• Therapeutics
• Case management
• Comorbidity