Re:The Relationship Between Intelligence and Anxiety
by techdragon on Monday December 21, 2015 @11:55PM
(#10775902)
Without reading the study I can't be sure, but it should be relatively easy to screen for that bias by factoring into their analysis the ratio of patients presenting with an awareness of their anxiety as distinct from the patients who presented with other reasons than anxiety since this kind of information should be available and makes sense to consider.
Re:The Relationship Between Intelligence and Anxiety
by danieltillett on Tuesday December 22, 2015 @01:49AM
(#10776273)
This study does not have the numbers of participants to do this analysis. Even if it did you can’t rule out that to be diagnosed with GAD you need a certain IQ or that the higher your IQ the more likely the diagnosis given the underlying condition.
There is an interesting reversal of this effect with schizophrenia. In order to be diagnosed with schizophrenia you have to have social or occupational dysfunction [1] (effectively not be able to care for yourself). You can be completely delusional, but if you are able to care for yourself then you are not considered to have schizophrenia. People with a high IQ you are often able to look after themselves while delusional much more effectively than people with a low IQ and so not meet the DSM criteria. The underlying biology maybe identical, but the diagnosis is different.
It is like 99% of these studies - of limited applicability and almost certainly unable to be replicated in a larger study. There is a name for these sort of studies, but I am trying to be charitable.