TY - JOUR T1 - Is perceived nervousness and anxiety a predictor of premature mortality and severe morbidity? A longitudinal follow up of the Swedish survey of living conditions JF - Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health JO - J Epidemiol Community Health SP - 794 LP - 798 DO - 10.1136/jech.2005.033076 VL - 59 IS - 9 AU - Gunilla Ringbäck Weitoft AU - Måns Rosén Y1 - 2005/09/01 UR - http://jech.bmj.com/content/59/9/794.abstract N2 - Study objective: To find out if people perceiving nervousness, uneasiness, and anxiety have excess risks of premature death and severe morbidity. Design, setting, participants: Random samples of the Swedish population aged 16–74 years in 1980–81, 1988–89, and 1995–96 were followed up for 5 and 10 years with regard to deaths and hospital admissions for different causes. Relative risks were estimated by Poisson regression, comparing those who reported perceived nervousness, uneasiness, and anxiety with those who did not and adjustments were made for baseline characteristics as age, education, smoking, and longstanding illness. Main results: Perceived nervousness, uneasiness, and anxiety was strongly related to subsequent risks of suicide attempt and psychiatric disease. Those perceiving severe complaints of anxiety had a relative risk (fully adjusted) for suicide attempt of 9.2 (95% CI 3.0 to 28.8) for men and 3.1 (1.4 to 7.1) for women. Even for less severe complaints, there was a significant, but less pronounced excess risk. These negative feelings were also associated with later risks for all cause mortality, hospital care, and ischaemic heart disease, although to a lesser extent and more strongly among men. Unchanged relative risks over time shows no trend in response attitude and perceived anxiety seems to be a better predictor of a negative health outcome than self reported longstanding illness. Conclusions: Positive responses to self report survey questions about anxiety/nervousness are associated with adverse health outcomes, particularly hospital admission for deliberate self harm. This is an alarming signal bearing in mind the rapid increase in prevalence of perceived anxiety in the Swedish society. ER -