Is Anxiety Genetic? What Research Says & How to Cope

What Does It Mean for Something to Be Genetic or Hereditary?

Genes are biochemical codes that control how the body functions and appears.¹ When we refer to a trait as being genetic, we are referring to the fact that it exists as a result of these biochemical codes instead of environmental influences. When we talk about a trait being hereditary, we are referring to the fact that it is passed on, through genes, from parent to offspring.

Is Anxiety Hereditary?

Research shows that genetics play a significant role in the development of anxiety disorders—the parents, siblings, and children of an individual who has been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder are up to six times more likely to develop an anxiety disorder themselves.¹

“Anxiety disorders are a common condition and affect as many as one in five people during their lifetime. Similar to common mental health conditions like depression, Anxiety disorders are thought to be due to a combination of genetic and environmental factors and not either alone. Anxiety symptoms reflect differences in temperament, personality, stress-related coping behaviors, physiological responses (fight or flight response), early life experiences, and others. Due to several factors, anxiety disorders are not directly caused by a single gene or genetic condition. Therefore, no single genetic test can tell if you have anxiety disorders or not.” – Sudhakar Selvaraj, MD, PhD, associate professor in the Faillace Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston

What Does the Research Say About Genetics & Anxiety?

Research demonstrates that genetic factors appear to be partly responsible for the hereditary nature of anxiety disorders, although the specific genes or combination of genes have yet to be clearly identified.^3,4,5,6 Some believe that genetic factors are also responsible for the fact that most people who experience anxiety tend to experience more than one type.^2,7 For instance, someone with panic disorder is 12 times more likely to also experience generalized anxiety disorder, and 11 times more likely to experience agoraphobia.²

Other factors that seem to increase the odds of developing an anxiety or mood disorder can include:⁹

• Having a parent who experienced the onset of anxiety or a mood disorder prior to 20 years of age
• Both parents having experienced anxiety and/or mood disorders

Will Everyone in My Family Develop Anxiety?

If you have an anxiety disorder, that doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone in your family will develop one. Realistically, your first degree relatives (i.e. parents, siblings, and children) are up to six times more likely to develop an anxiety disorder.¹

Do Family Members Develop the Same Type of Anxiety?

There appears to be evidence that first-degree relatives are more likely to develop specific types of anxiety disorders. Panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and social anxiety have a genetic componant. If your first-degree relative has one of these disorders, you are four to six times more likely to develop the same disorder.¹

Additional links have been identified between parents and children related to specific types of anxiety disorders:¹⁴

• Children with social anxiety are 3.7 times more likely to have a mother with social anxiety disorder
• Children with generalized anxiety disorder are 3.5 times more likely to have a mother with generalized anxiety disorder
• Children with social anxiety disorder are almost 3 times more likely to have a father with anxiety disorder

Will I Pass My Anxiety Down to My Children?

Based on the current understanding of anxiety, it is impossible to say if someone will or will not pass anxiety to their children because there is not a direct relationship with anxiety and genetics. If you have anxiety, though, there is a better chance that your children will have anxious symptoms compared to someone with no anxiety.

When considering passing down anxiety, it’s important to consider the environment as well as genetics. If a child experiences a stressful or tense home life, trauma, or a lack of safety, the environment could be enough to produce an anxiety disorder.

Other Factors That Influence Anxiety

There are also certain individual, environmental, and socio-demographic factors that appear to influence the risk of developing anxiety:²

• Gender: Women have a higher prevalence of anxiety disorders
• Marital status: Being married is considered a protective factor
• Occupation: Being unemployed is a risk factor
• Education: A lower level of education is a risk factor
• Financial situation: Lower income is a risk factor
• Reacting to change with avoidance, withdrawal, or crying: Emotional lability is a risk factor
• Negative, violent, or stressful life events: Risk factor
• Parental rejection or overprotection: Linked to the development of social phobias

Selvaraj notes, “Individual human life experiences are shaped by many important factors right from our brain development. For example, what happens during pregnancy when the fetus is inside the uterus (womb) is critical. Children born to mothers who are very stressed due to medical or psychological reasons during pregnancy are at increased risk of anxiety or stress-related problems. Also, your home, school, neighborhood, and people around you influence how you deal with stress and the risk of anxiety disorders. Adverse family relationships, bullying, early experience of abuse, severe medical conditions during childhood are significant factors associated with anxiety disorders at a later age. But not all of those who experienced adversities develop later anxiety. Some develop anxiety, and others become resilient and cope well to stress and adverse life experiences, which is not fully known. But this is where the influence of epigenetics is thought to play.”

The Relationship Between Anxiety & Stress

Stress and anxiety share overlapping nervous system responses and consequently, the boundaries between the two are still being determined.¹⁵ However, while stress reactions have protective and adaptive survival functions, anxiety disorders trigger reactions that end up hindering your ability to adapt and function.

Anxiety might occur in response to a specific type of perceived threat (e.g., being in a social situation or leaving one’s home), or it might be a more general and pervasive fear with no clear trigger (like with generalized anxiety disorder). It has been proposed that genes and stress, either alone or in combination, can increase the likelihood of developing an anxiety disorder.⁶