alt Hacker News> Anxiety is the second leading cause of disability and mortality worldwide.
I think this comes from WHO, but isn't consistent with other information from WHO, so it's pretty debatable.
I believe the source is this[0], which says "Mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression are highly prevalent in all countries and communities, affecting people of all ages and income levels. They represent the second biggest reason for long-term disability, contributing to loss of healthy life."
However, elsewhere on their site[1], WHO lists the top 3 global causes of death and disability in 2021 as heart disease, COVID-19, and stroke.
[0] https://www.who.int/news/item/02-09-2025-over-a-billion-peop...
[1] https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/theme-details/GHO/m...
No, its very reliable after consideration for how anxiety works from a physiological perspective and what does to a person's health and how modifies their decisions and behaviors. When all these factors are taken into account anxiety alone may account for most other more directly measured mortality conditions.
The other side of that coin is that anxiety is also most prominently the result of social conditioning as opposed to diagnosed illness. This results in anti-anxiety medications that are vastly over-prescribed for individuals that receive less than ideal benefits.