Could Anxiety Be Inherited? A Personal Investigation
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I've always wondered, why my family members and I experienced a certain kind of anxiety. I alone went to a grueling phase in college where I couldn't breath and move, having panic attacks. I saw my mother when I was very young having seizures one day, she was taken to the hospital but physically she was fine. My older brother, was on medication for depression which triggered his anxiety years ago and my younger brother, was a hypochondriac. He was visiting his doctor several times a week and have his blood checked every week for 3 months for a disease he didn't have. My grandfather on my mother's side suffered from Alzheimer's disease that triggered his anxiety. Could my grandfather's illness a basis on the evidence of it's inheritance from one generation to another? Or it has long been passed before him? Is it just environment or hereditary, or a combination of both? So I probed to find out more about the genetic side of this disorder.
A definition in Wikipedia states that,
"Anxiety disorders are a group of mental disorders characterized by feelings of anxiety and fear. Anxiety is a worry about future events and fear is a reaction to current events. These feelings may cause physical symptoms, such as a fast heart rate and shakiness."
The symptoms were evident in my immediate family except for my father.
So what is the connection between Genetics and Anxiety?
A study I found out conducted by Dr. Ned Kalin and his colleagues from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, on rhesus monkeys showed a significant factor on anxiety. The monkeys' traits were compared to humans, and they showed an "anxious temperament." They were exposed in a mildly stressful situation, with a person and were locked in a room. The monkeys stopped moving and refrain from vocalizing prompting their stress hormones to soar. This behavior as what Dr. Kalin said is also evident in extremely shy children. He and his colleagues examined the brains of young monkeys, found three brain regions linked with anxiety showing signs of heritability. They found overactivity in the anxious brains which is significantly inherited from the parents that may lead to depression and anxiety later in life.
Another study explains that it's like an on and off switch rather than an intricate combination of genes that can put you at the chances in developing the disorder. This is so even if the symptoms and diagnosis are different from your relatives. Psychologist Amy Przeworski, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of psychological sciences at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland was quoted on it's connection:
"Individuals inherit a predisposition to being an anxious person, [and] about 30 to 40 percent of the variability is related to genetic factors.”
Looking further into the study, researchers have tried to better comprehend the genetics behind anxiety disorders by examining the cases of relatives with the same anxiety disorder. It was found that the risk is greater for panic disorder for twins and a higher risk for with the same diagnosis if an immediate relative has it. This made me think more because I suddenly remembered that my aunt and cousin suffers from anxiety and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) as well. A theory that it can be extended across families.
Statistics shows that Anxiety Disorder affects 18.1 percent of adults in the United States alone approximately 40 million adults between the ages of 18 to 54. This is based on the The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Anxiety Disorders' data.
The study presented that that the risk of anxiety may reveal in families, but the role of genetic influence versus the influence of the family environment is still vague. Environment still tends to be a major factor that contributes to this illness. After all, families most likely experience the same environments and stresses, Genetics may only be a part of it.
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On a global scale the Western countries have a more significant figure on its prevalence as shown in the data below. While it is lesser in Asian countries, it still continues to rise as modernization continues to widen it's presence . There were two separate studies of anxiety disorders and major depressive disorder authors discovered that surveys of clinical anxiety and depression have been made across 91 countries, with the involvement of 480,000 people. Proof that it is widely diagnosed and widespread in all countries and families.
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This hereditary study needs to be researched even further, but the revelation is notable. Awareness and careful understanding of this illness should be implemented. Luckily for my family, my mother, brothers and I overcame and beat the odds. We are thankful for the strong support system and prayers we have received from each other and from our relatives. For those who are silently suffering and has been diagnosed, it is best to observe family traits and if symptoms are existing help must be obtained. Further understanding helps in the road to recovery.
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sources:
http://www.livescience.com/51477-anxious-brains-are-inherited.html
http://www.everydayhealth.com/news/is-anxiety-hereditary/
http://www.anxietycentre.com/anxiety-statistics-information.shtml
http://www.futurity.org/globally-1-in-13-suffers-from-anxiety/
Great article! There are a few things I would like to point out:
Sometimes, there are hidden illnesses which are difficult to discover through regular checkups. Because anxiety can often cause similar symptoms, many doctors falsely assume that all non-diagnosed symptoms are due to anxiety. It's not the case. There are many complicated processes in the human body and in many cases we cannot know how one small damage can cause another one through a domino effect. I know a person who often suffers from dangerously high blood pressure. Nearly all doctors he visited in the past told him that the cause is anxiety because all examinations in related body parts showed nothing wrong. It turns out that an operation he had on the right leg in the past had caused an imbalance and subsequently a neurological damage on his left leg, which in turn caused intense pain, forcing the person to resort to a chronic use of painkillers, which after a few years caused stomach problems such as ulcers and hiatal hernia, an abnormality where a part of the stomach slides up into the chest cavity past the diaphragm, and in his case, puts pressure on the main artery and that's what causes the high blood pressure! It's a Doctor House scenario, but it happens more often than we think. Similarly, you can never know if your mother's seizures were actually due to anxiety or whether there was an underlining issue.
In the above case scenario, a hidden illness can cause anxiety, not the other way around. There is something wrong with the body and the body knows it, so the first response is obviously, stress. That being said, there are hereditary illnesses, so this might add up to the subsequent anxiety being inherited.
Anxiety can be spread through nurture and not just nature. I remember reading a research done on Polish and German babies after WW2. It turns out that Polish babies were more stressed and cried more. If your society is stressed, your parents are stressed, you will be stressed. There is another research that showed that most babies who were born in the starvation period of the war, grew up to be overweight, possibly due to a metabolic syndrome (not enough food so the body learned to retain everything). The body balance is instantly off. Physical and psychological anxiety are not so different as we think.
Anxiety is mostly an illness of the western society. That does not mean that other cultures do not suffer from anxiety, just that western culture recognizes it more as an illness. There are other cultures with mentality such as "that's life, toughen up". They rarely visit therapists for psychological issues and depend on their social network to work them out, or just plain ignore them as some of the downsides of being a living breathing organism.
Most of what you pointed out is of course related to environment (nurture) . I didn't expound on that because that's what most studies state. My mother's seizure occured after she had an ugly fight with her younger brother. She was already in deep stress. I remember her crying and the incident happened. Indeed, thank you for the additional info.
I wonder if there is an epigenetic component to anxiety. Methylation patterns turning genes on and off leading to anxiety that can be passed from parent to child?
Wondering about that too, and could it be suppressed? Make it inactive? So many questions, but then, I leave it to geneticists. :)
Epigenetics is still a fairly new field, and our understanding of all of the processes and regulatory possibilities are really just scratching at the surface I think. So those are great questions, and ones that I don't know that science can truly answer just yet.
Great report. This is super interesting to think and read about!
Thank you for reading! :)
"Inheretence..."
Genetics. Genetic code.
Programming. Memory programming.
3 levels to the memory system... self, others, planetary.
"Inherentence" = others & planetary memory.
Epigentics... recoding.
Nothing is set in stone.
Some memory, perhaps we are intended to reprogram...
I like this.