The authors investigated whether histories of childhood physical or sexual abuse were more frequently in a clinical sample of patients with anxiety disorders than in a matched community comparison sample.
Childhood physical abuse was higher among both men (15.5%) and women (33.3%) with anxiety disorders than among comparison subjects (8.1%). Childhood sexual abuse was higher among women with anxiety disorders (45.1%) than among comparison women (15.4%) and was higher among women with panic disorder (60.0%) than among women with other anxiety disorders (30.8%).
These findings confirm the association between anxiety disorders and reported childhood physical and sexual abuse and extend earlier findings by pointing to a particular association between sexual abuse and panic disorder in women.
Two separate community surveys found that childhood sexual victimization predicted the later onset of agoraphobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and social phobia.
Most recently, a British study of inner-city women found that early adverse experiences (including neglect, physical abuse, and sexual abuse) predisposed them to the development of anxiety disorders in adulthood.
[...] Primate data suggest that adverse early experiences can result in long-term neurobiological alterations that might predispose subjects to anxiety-related disorders.