Key Anxiety Statistics at a Glance
- In a 2026 poll, the American Psychiatric Association found that 48% of US adults felt more anxious than a year earlier, up from 43% in 2025.
- About 1.17 billion people worldwide lived with a mental disorder in 2023, nearly double the 1990 figure, per the IHME Global Burden of Disease 2023 study.
- Roughly 1 in 5 US adults (19%) have ever been diagnosed with anxiety, and about 1 in 8 (12%) regularly feel anxious, according to the CDC (2024).
- In 2024, 23.4% of US adults, over 60 million people, experienced a mental illness of some kind, per Mental Health America.
- A 2024 Gallup poll found 51% of Americans had experienced depression, anxiety, or another mental or emotional condition.
- In 2024, 7.4% of US adults, about 19.4 million people, had moderate-to-severe generalized anxiety, per SAMHSAâs National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
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Anxiety Around the World: Countries With the Highest Rates
- Anxiety is a global condition, but no two countries measure it the same way. The country rankings below are based on the IHME Global Burden of Disease 2023 study, the newest comparable global dataset. For each country, I then show its most recent national figure.
- These national numbers come from different surveys, so they are not perfectly comparable. Some measures diagnose disorders. Others measure self-reported worry. I have noted what each one tracks so you read it the right way.
- Portugal reports one of the highest rates in Europe. In 2025, INE Portugal found that 39.4% of the population had generalized anxiety symptoms, with 11.3% rated as severe. That is up from 32% in 2024.
- Brazil is close behind. A national survey reported by CNN Brasil found 26.8% of adults had an anxiety diagnosis in 2023. Among adults aged 18 to 24, that rose to 31.6%.
- The United Kingdom shows a similar pattern. In early 2026, the Office for National Statistics found that 33% of adults reported high anxiety. The figure reached 37% among women and 43% among people aged 16 to 29.
The table below shows each countryâs most recent national figure and what it measures.
Anxiety in the United States
Anxiety by Gender
Women carry more anxiety than men. In 2019, 15.0% of US women felt worried, nervous, or anxious daily. The figure for men was 10.2%, per CDC NHIS data. That is the most recent national rate the CDC reports, split by sex. I see this gap every day in the people who use our tools.
The reasons are layered. Hormones, social pressure, and unequal caregiving loads all play a part. But the gap in the data is also a gap in who speaks up. Men report less, so their numbers look smaller than they really are.
Men
About 20% of US men reported any mental illness in the past year. That comes from 2024 SAMHSA data. It works out to roughly one in five.
I think the real number runs higher. Men seek help less often than women. So their anxiety tends to stay hidden and uncounted. Many of the men who reach our tools have never told anyone. They often call it stress, not anxiety. If work itself feels like the trigger, read about fear of work (ergophobia) .
Women
Women report anxiety nearly 1.5 times as often as men. The CDC NHIS figures above show that 15% of women felt anxious daily in 2019. For men, the figure was 10.2%.
Women also reported daily depression more often, at 4.9% versus 3.5% for men. The pattern holds steady across surveys and years. It shows up clearly in our own readers. More women find us, and more describe daily, grinding worry. That does not mean men feel it less. It means women are more likely to name it.
LGBTQ+
Among LGBTQ+ young people, 66% reported recent anxiety symptoms. That comes from The Trevor Projectâs 2024 survey . The rate was 67% for ages 13 to 17 and 65% for ages 18 to 24.
That sits far above the general population. Many describe social fear in particular. Stigma and rejection raise the daily load for this group. You can learn more about social anxiety disorder and how it tends to present.
Anxiety by Age Group
Anxiety by Race and Ethnicity
Anxiety by Education Level
Income and Financial Anxiety
Anxiety in the Workplace
Social Media, Technology, and Anxiety
Teens see the harm clearly. In 2025, 48% of US teens said social media has a mostly negative effect on people their age. That comes from the Pew Research Center. The share was up from 32% in 2022. That is a steep rise in just three years.
Anxiety by Type of Disorder
Anxiety is not one condition, so I have broken the main anxiety disorders down by type below.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
GAD is the most diagnosed anxiety condition in the US. In 2023, about 6.6% of adults had a diagnosis. That is roughly 16.4 million people, up from 5.4% (13.3 million) in 2020.
Looking at the period from 2021 to 2023, the number is larger. About 10.3% of US adults, or 25.3 million people, had diagnosed GAD in that window. Of those patients, 67.4% were women.
These are claims-based numbers, so they count only diagnosed cases. The authors note that 50% to 70% of GAD goes undiagnosed. The true total is likely higher.
Social Anxiety Disorder
Social anxiety disorder is most common in young people. A 2024 global meta-analysis reported a prevalence of 8.3% among adolescents and 17% among youth. It was 4.7% in children.
The picture for US adults is less up-to-date. The most recent national survey is the NCS-R, which is about 20 years old. It put lifetime prevalence near 13%.
So treat the adult figure as a dated estimate. The fresher numbers above describe young people and a global sample, not US adults. The takeaway still holds. This condition tends to start early and hits the young hardest.
Panic Disorder
Panic often becomes a crisis. In the most recent national analysis, anxiety and panic attacks drove over 1 million US emergency-department visits in a single year. That was about 12.7% of all psychiatric ED visits.
The exact count was 1,015,486 visits, based on 2021 hospital data published in 2024. The bare PubMed link needs the specific article ID before publishing.
This is the newest panic-specific national figure I could find. No recent general-population prevalence rate for panic disorder exists. So I have used the ER data as the best current signal of how often panic turns acute.
Specific Phobias
Animal phobias are the most common type in the general population. But among people who seek help, the picture differs. A 2025 study of 1,017 phobia patients found emetophobia, an intense fear of vomiting, was the most-treated specific phobia.
You can see the full list of phobias for context, and more on emetophobia itself.
One caveat. That study used a non-US clinical sample. No recent US general-population phobia survey exists, so this is the best current angle. It also shows a useful gap. The phobias people fear most are not always the ones they bring to treatment.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
PTSD affects about 3.6% of US adults in a given year and 6.8% over a lifetime. That is the most recent national survey, the NCS-R, which is roughly 20 years old.
Among trauma-exposed groups, the rate is far higher. A 2024 umbrella review found about 24% in those populations. That 24% is not a general-population rate.
One note on classification. The DSM-5 moved PTSD out of the anxiety-disorder category. It is now treated as related to but no longer part of that group.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
OCD has a combined lifetime prevalence of 4.1% across 10 countries. A 2025 World Mental Health analysis also put the 12-month rate at 3.0%. The US lifetime estimate is lower, around 2.3%.
This is the freshest of the disorder sources here. Still, the headline 4.1% is cross-national, not a US figure. Read the 2.3% as the closer match for US adults.
Like PTSD, the DSM-5 reclassified OCD. It now sits with conditions related to, but no longer inside, the anxiety-disorder category.
What Causes Anxiety? Risk Factors and Triggers
Anxiety has no single cause. It usually comes from genes, stress, trauma, other health conditions, and substance use acting together. Below, I walk through the main common anxiety causes that the research supports.
Genetics
Genes play a real but partial role. One twin study put the heritability of generalized anxiety at 39% to 46% in adulthood. Heritability is higher in childhood and declines as you age.
So a family history raises your risk. It does not lock in your outcome. Most of the cause sits with your environment and the experiences you live through.
Stress
Stress is the factor adults blame most. In an American Psychiatric Association poll of more than 2,200 US adults, 53% named stress as the top lifestyle factor affecting their mental health. Sleep came second, at 40%.
Everyday pressure is one of the common anxiety triggers you can act on. Work, money, and poor sleep all feed it. Short-term stress is normal. The risk grows when it never lets up.
Trauma
Early trauma leaves a long mark. One community survey of women looked at childhood abuse survivors. Versus non-victims, they faced a 1.5 times higher risk of major depression. Their odds of OCD were 6.7 times higher.
That study is older and used a small sample of 391 women. Read the numbers as direction, not precision. The harm can also carry forward, which is why generational trauma and anxiety are linked.
Other health conditions
Anxiety rarely travels alone. It often overlaps with depression, chronic illness, and substance problems. When two conditions occur together, doctors call it comorbidity. Each can make the other harder to spot and treat.
This matters in a practical way. A physical illness can mask anxiety, and anxiety can deepen a physical illness. The substance link below shows how this overlap plays out.
**Substance use* ## Anxiety During Pregnancy and After Birth
About 1 in 5 women (20%) experience a maternal anxiety disorder during the perinatal period. The rate peaks at 25.5% in early pregnancy. That figure comes from the Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health, citing studies from 2016 and 2024.
So anxiety often arrives with the pregnancy itself, well before delivery. Yet most women never get checked for it.
Fewer than 1 in 5 women are screened for maternal mental health disorders, the same fact sheet reports. That gap leaves many mothers struggling in silence.
The strain also appears to be growing. US mothers reporting âfair to poorâ mental health rose nearly 65% between 2016 and 2023. That trend comes from a 2025 JAMA Internal Medicine study, summarized by the Policy Center.
If you are pregnant or newly postpartum, please know this is common. You are not failing. Talking to your OB or midwife is a fair first step. Screening takes only a few minutes and can open the door to real help.
Anxiety and Physical Illness
Anxiety Screening and the USPSTF Recommendation
Anxiety Medication Use Is Rising
More US adults are taking anxiety medication than a few years ago. The share rose from 11.7% in 2019 to 14.3% in 2024. That is roughly 8 million more people, bringing the total to around 38 million. The numbers come from CDC survey data, reported by KFF Health News.
The type of medication is shifting too. Benzodiazepine use fell from 4.7% in 2018 to 3.4% in 2022. The steepest drop was among adults 56 and older, a 2026 study found. SSRIs are rising as benzodiazepines decline.
There is reason for hope here. Over half of people with generalized anxiety disorder on an SSRI saw symptoms drop by at least 50%. Only about 1 in 12 stopped due to side effects. KFF Health News reports those figures from a Cochrane review here. These efficacy figures are confirmed on KFF, which attributes them to a Cochrane review not separately checked.
Medication is one path, not the only one. If you are weighing it, learn what to expect from seeing a psychiatrist for anxiety.
Anxiety in Children and Teens
Caregiver Anxiety
- Caring for a loved one takes a real toll on mental health. Among unpaid caregivers, 25.6% had diagnosed depression in their lifetime. That compares to 18.6% of non-caregivers. Frequent mental distress was also higher, at 20.5% versus 13.6%. The figures come from a 2024 CDC report using 2021-2022 data.
- That data measures depression and distress, not anxiety specifically. Other research speaks more directly to how caregivers feel.
- Only about 36% of family caregivers report âvery goodâ mental health. And 27% say caregiving causes them a great deal of stress, per 2025 industry research. The US now has roughly 63 million family caregivers, up 45% over the past decade.
- If you are one of them, your own strain is real and worth tending. You cannot pour from an empty cup. Short breaks, honest conversations, and asking for support all help. Your own anxiety counts too, and it deserves care. Tending your mental health is part of caregiving, not a step away from it.
The Real Cost of Anxiety Treatment
Political and News Anxiety
Anxiety and Suicide Risk
Can Anxiety Get Better? Recovery and Remission
Anxiety in Rural vs. Urban America
Health Anxiety and âCyberchondriaâ
Health anxiety affects an estimated 2.1% to 13.1% of adults, per a 2024 review in Current Psychiatry Reports. In primary and secondary medical settings, the range rises to 7-19.9%.
Those ranges are wide for a reason. The estimates are heterogeneous, draw on non-US samples, and shift with differing diagnostic criteria. Health anxiety affects men and women roughly equally.
The same review highlights a modern driver. Compulsive online symptom-searching, known as cyberchondria, is identified as a core maintaining behavior of the disorder. Health anxiety has also risen across three decades in both community and medical settings.
I get it. One worrying search leads to another, and an hour later you feel worse, not better.
If checking and searching have taken over, that pattern has a name and a path out. Learn more about illness anxiety disorder and how treatment can quiet the loop. You can break the cycle.
Anxiety and Substance Use
Anxiety and substance use often travel together, and the link runs both ways. Among people treated for anxiety disorders, an estimated 20% to 40% have a co-occurring alcohol use disorder, according to the NIAAA.
Alcohol can ease anxiety for a short while. Over time, it tends to worsen both the anxiety and the drinking.
Cannabis shows a similar pattern. In one large cohort, people with an emergency-department visit for cannabis use had a 3.88-fold higher risk of a new anxiety diagnosis, per a 2024 study in eClinicalMedicine. Within three years, 27.5% were diagnosed, versus 5.6% of the general population. That study was conducted in Ontario, Canada.
If you use substances to cope, that is a human response to real distress, not a character flaw. The good news is that treating the anxiety and the substance use together works better than treating either alone.
Frequently Asked Questions
Final Thoughts
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