Anxious Young People Have Fewer Fatal Accidents

Anxiety can be a crippling disorder. But in the right quantity at the right time, it can save your life. A study by William Lee and his colleagues at the Institute for Psychiatry in London in the journal Psychological Medicine, using data from a national British survey of health outcomes, discovered that those individuals who had higher anxiety, as measured in adolescence by teachers and the kids themselves, were significantly less likely to die in accidents before they were 25. “Our results suggest there are survival benefits of increased trait anxiety in early adult life, but these may be balanced by corresponding survival deficits in later life associated with medical problems”,the researchers said.