Why anxiety disorders strike more women than men

This article describes a recent study of why anxiety disorders strike twice as many women as men:

Clinical psychologist Dr Kim Felmingham, of the University of Tasmania, and colleagues, report their finding in a recent issue of the journal Biological Psychology. 

"Women develop these anxiety disorders at approximately twice the rate that men do and we really don't have a good explanation for why that happens," says Felmingham.

Felmingham and her team "tested a biological hypothesis that could explain why women have a greater prevalence of anxiety disorders":

Previous research has found emotional memories, typically negative memories, are better recalled than neutral emotions, says Felmingham. 

And, the higher the arousal at the time the emotional memory is encoded dictates how well it is "consolidated" and remembered later. 

"Maybe women have greater arousal during encoding and that therefore leads to stronger emotional memory consolidations," says Felmingham.

The result:

"With that same level of arousal, women actually had greater memory consolidation than men," says Felmingham. 

Felmingham says it is not clear what specifically about the arousal that is affecting memory recall but the findings suggest a potential mechanism for the greater prevalence of anxiety disorders in women.

SCIENCE!