However, the equivalent prevalence rates

for mental disorders were only 32% (at least one diagnosis over a lifetime period) and 20% (at least one diagnosis over a 12-month period) in the ECA study. Analysis of the lifetime prevalence rates for each clinical entity (in decreasing order) provides an explanation. The difference mainly lies in depressive disorders and addictions, whose prevalence could arguably have increased. The difference in data between the ECA and NCS studies concerning phobic disorders is comparable to that observed in data originating between different ECA study centers, and is probably attributable Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical to semiological data recording methods. Finally, the prevalence Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of schizophrenia is lower, which could be partly due to a lower prevalence of schizophrenia and partly due to the fact that institutionalized

patients were excluded from the NCS study. On the other hand, Angst and Wicki12 conducted a study in Zurich to identify recurrent brief anxiety (RBA) syndromes. The concept of brief and transient psychiatric pathologies has long been known, but has received an increasing amount of attention Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical in the past few years. The terms recurrent brief depression (RED), RBA, recurrent brief hypomania, neurasthenia, and insomnia have all been coined recently. All these syndromes last 1 to 3 days on average, and are highly recurrent (at least once a month over a whole year). The authors

who developed these concepts have defined Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical them by means of the following diagnostic criteria12: Anxiety (fear of being alone, apprehension of impending doom, fear of the next day dawning). Three of the four GAD symptoms as described in DSM-III (motor tension, neurovegetative hyperactivity, apprehension, exacerbated awareness while exploring surroundings). Anxious mood for 1 to 13 days, at least once a month during the previous year. Subjective professional impairment of handicap. The authors12 noticed that RBA morbidity was often associated Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical with PDs and RED, and that many RBA patients had past familial and www.selleckchem.com/products/XL184.html personal history of anxiety and depression. Angst and Wicki therefore suggested that the association of RBA and RBD could reflect a shared genetic predisposition for depression and anxiety.12 The comorbidity rate of RBA too with other diagnoses is such (>75% with depression, >25% with phobias, >16% with PD, and >6% with GAD) that one can understandably challenge the authenticity of this clinical entity. Furthermore, the symptomatic definition of RBA does not identify any distinctive characteristic from those of GAD, aside from duration. These concepts can be questioned in the same way that one can challenge the existence of subsyndromic states. These states are related to entities defined by classical criteria systems (DSM-III, DSM-IV, or ICD-10), but differ only because they consist of n-1 or n-2 symptoms.