Panic anxiety, under the weather?

Abstract

The relationship between weather conditions and psychiatric disorders has been a continuous subject of speculation due to contradictory findings. This study attempts to further clarify this relationship by focussing on specific conditions such as panic attacks and non-panic anxiety in relation to specific meteorological variables. All psychiatric emergencies attended at a general hospital in Barcelona (Spain) during 2002 with anxiety as main complaint were classified as panic or non-panic anxiety according to strict independent and retrospective criteria. Both groups were assessed and compared with meteorological data (wind speed and direction, daily rainfall, temperature, humidity and solar radiation). Seasons and weekend days were also included as independent variables. Non-parametric statistics were used throughout since most variables do not follow a normal distribution. Logistic regression models were applied to predict days with and without the clinical condition. Episodes of panic were three times more common with the poniente wind (hot wind), twice less often with rainfall, and one and a half times more common in autumn than in other seasons. These three trends (hot wind, rainfall and autumn) were accumulative for panic episodes in a logistic regression formula. Significant reduction of episodes on weekends was found only for non-panic episodes. Panic attacks, unlike other anxiety episodes, in a psychiatric emergency department in Barcelona seem to show significant meteorotropism. Assessing specific disorders instead of overall emergencies or other variables of a more general quality could shed new light on the relationship between weather conditions and behaviour.

Weekly pattern of emergency room admissions for peptic ulcers: A population-based study

“…Numerous studies have investigated diurnal, weekly, or seasonal variations in the onset of different diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases [7,[22][23][24] , cerebrovascular diseases [25,26] , and psychiatric disorders [27][28][29] , as well as complicated (including hemorrhage and perforation) and uncomplicated PUs [8][9][10][11] , for which the highest incidences are in winter. This seasonal fluctuation of PU may be affected by several factors, including climatic factors [30] , increased intake of NSAIDs in winter [31] , significantly increased number of H. pylori infections in winter [32] , and variations in alcohol consumption [33] .…”

Metereological conditions and psychiatric emergency visits in Messina, Italy

“…Panic anxiety was found to be more frequent during days with the warm western-origin poniente wind and during fall, and less frequent during rainfall (Bulbena et al, 2007). Episodes of panic were more common with the ponente wind (hot wind) twice less often rainfall, and one and a half times more common in fall than in other seasons (Bulbena et al, 2005). Vulnerability to seasonal changes seems to be a separate dimension of bipolar disorder (Volpe et al, 2008;Volpe et al, 2010).…”

“…Among the latter, meteorological conditions, which have been shown to have an impact on the human beings (Sulman, 1984). The literature suggests a relationship between weather conditions and affective disorders, in example mood disorders (Molin et al, 1999;Lee et al, 2007), anxiety disorders (Bulbena et al, 2005), psychosis and impulsiveness (Volpe et al, 2008;Shory et al, 2003).…”

Human Thermal Conditions and North Europeans’ Web Searching Behavior (Google Trends) on Mediterranean Touristic Destinations

“…Scientists have already described the influence of the environmental conditions, especially weather, on the psychology and behaviour via conscious and subconscious functions [6][7][8][9]. The essential datasets for the analysis of weather influence on human life are the meteorological data, along with archives of medical registries, psychiatric hospital databases, and police stations' records [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] or structured questionnaires completed by individuals in open public spaces [18][19][20]. The major drawback of those datasets is that are fragmented and more or less biased by several known and unknown factors [9,21,22] such as the unknown physical, mental and psychological conditions of interviewees along with their acclimatization level when we referred to structured questionnaires [7,23].…”