Women are almost twice as anxious as men, but shouldn't science be investigating why?

According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA): 'Never knew there was an association like that tho' “From the time a girl reaches puberty until about the age of 50, she is twice as likely to have an anxiety disorder as a man.”

The ADAA goes on to suggest this gender disparity may result from differences in how men and women process serotonin or variation in hormone levels. The notion that hormones may play a role in anxiety has been further supported by research relating to estrogen.

But others suggest the link between gender and anxiety isn’t quite so hard-wired. Instead, it’s the way girls and boys have traditionally been socialized with boys being taught to suck things up, and girls encouraged to cry on a dime which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy adding that women continue to face special burdens large and small  everything from worrying about the threat of sexual violence to shouldering extra domestic responsibilities.

Regardless, shouldn’t we know to a scientific certainty exactly how and why women seem to suffer from so much more anxiety than men? Cause i for one would love to know. With women now being medicated for psychiatric conditions at a rate of one in four, as opposed to one in seven men, the stakes have certainly never been higher.

Another Recent research suggests that anxiety might be linked to higher verbal intelligence. There is also data which supports the notion that certain anxious people are better able to respond to some kinds of threats.

Of course, we don’t know if being more anxious makes you more verbally intelligent. But if women really are the more anxious sex, might we also be more verbally intelligent and better able to respond to some threats? Isn’t it possible that while we as a gender  suffer disproportionately from the negative aspects of anxiety, we are also simultaneously benefiting in unrecognized ways?

Bottom line? We don’t know.

But we sure deserve to? Shouldn’t women know exactly how and why they are more anxious, and whether it might have any upside? Because at this rate if there is some long-overlooked benefit there’s absolutely no chance we’ll ever get to take advantage of it.