12 Facts You May Not Know About Anxiety and Parkinson’s Disease

I culled the following points from a half dozen online articles, listed below.

I’m keen to learn more about anxiety as it relates to Parkinson’s disease.  My neurologist is having me visit a psychiatrist who will tweak my drug regimen to help me deal with anxiety.  I’m pretty sure that anxiety is causing me to wake up in the middle of the night, and I also am aware that when I’m under stress at, say, work, my anxiety levels soar into the stratosphere.

Here we go!

1. Up to 31% of Parkies may experience major anxiety disorder.
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2. Anxiety can co-exist with depression.
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3. Anxiety is not caused merely by your reaction to the bad news that you have PD. Rather, PD causes additional chemical changes in your brain besides the major change we all know about (the loss of dopamine-producing cells).  These additional chemical changes can bring on depression and anxiety.
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4. Having anxiety increases your likelihood of cognitive impairment:

“A recent study of 185 patients newly diagnosed with PD, for example, found that the odds of having cognitive impairment were 3-fold in those with anxiety vs in those without anxiety.” (See articles 1 and 2 below.)

5. Anxiety especially increases the likelihood of impairment in “executive functions,” which include planning, attention focus, and problem solving.
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6. Non-pharmacological fixes (meditation, exercise, talk therapy) may be just as good at alleviating anxiety as medication.
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7. Anxiety disorders may appear early in patients with PD, even before the official diagnosis. One paper suggests anxiety disorder can appear 20 years before the first physical symptoms of PD. (See article 4, below.)
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8. Sleep disruption may be a sign you have anxiety disorder.
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9. Staying socially active with family and friends helps to combat anxiety.
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10. Symptoms and feelings of anxiety can fluctuate, even on a daily basis when, say, your regular PD meds wear off.
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11. “The anxiety disorders in Parkinson’s disease patients appear to be clustered in the panic disorder, phobic disorder, and generalised anxiety disorder areas.“  (See article 5, below.)
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12. But actually, there’s a longer list of specific anxiety disorders that PD may bring on: “Generalised anxiety disorder, panic disorder, social phobia, phobic disorder, agoraphobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anxiety disorder not otherwise specified.”  (See article 6.)

Articles

1. Anxiety is Associated with Cognitive Impairment in Newly-Diagnosed Parkinson’s Disease.
2. Effect of Depression and Anxiety on Cognition in Parkinson’s Disease.
3. Treating Depression and Anxiety in Parkinson’s Disease.
4. Parkinson’s Anxiety is Likely More Than Plain Vanilla.
5. Parkinson’s Disease and Anxiety (abstract).
6. Parkinson’s Disease and Anxiety (full paper).