A comparison of the content and management of worry in younger and older anxious adults

• Main Author: Borthwick, Jennifer
• Published: University of Edinburgh 1999
• Subjects: 155
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.641797

Clinical impression suggests that worry is a significant problem for many older adults, but very little research on worrying has used older adults as a sample group. Some recent research suggests that older adults may differ somewhat from younger adults in the nature of their worry and the strategies they use to control it. The present study compared a group of adults over 65 years of age with a group of adults under 65 on various measures of worry. All participants were recruited from psychology and psychiatry departments where they were receiving treatment for an anxiety disorder. Both groups completed the same questionnaire battery: the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ), the Anxious Thoughts Inventory (AnTI) and the Meta-Cognitions Questionnaire (MCQ). A semi-structured interview investigating the strategies participants used to control their worrying was also administered. Participants who did not reach the cut-off score on the PSWQ or whose score on the depression scale of the HADS was higher than their score on the anxiety scale had their data excluded. The remaining data was analysed, the results were presented and the conclusions were discussed.