Anxiety and Osteoarthritis Disability: Updated Overview and Commentary

Abstract

Osteoarthritis, a widespread highly painful often incapacitating joint disease continues to impose immense personal and societal challenges among adults of all ages, especially among older adults. In the absence of any effective cure or treatment, it has become essential to explore all correlates of this chronic disabling disease, especially those that might be preventable or modifiable. Anxiety, a potentially remediable state of mental distress found linked to chronically disabling forms of arthritis, in various imperceptible ways, and which may have an immense bearing on the outcomes of osteoarthritis, has not received as much attention in the related literature as other topics, such as surgery.