The Differential Perception of Anxiety in Medical Patients: Sociodemographic Aspects

Abstract

An investigation of anxiety in 100 general medical inpatients showed that the attending physicians rated about one-third of the patients as highly anxious. Comparisons between the physician's and nurses' ratings and the patients' scores on four standardized anxiety scales revealed that there was differential perception of the patients' anxiety levels. An analysis of the physicians' ratings, nurses' ratings, and the scores on the anxiety scales, in terms of the patients' sociodemographic characteristics, pointed to factors associated with the differential perception of anxiety. Physicians tended to overrate young patients and high SES patients as having greater anxiety than the scales indicated and both physicians and nurses consistently underrated the blacks' and the lower SES patients' anxiety levels. The results demonstrated clinicians' problems with the identification of anxious patients and indicate some factors associated with differential perception of patients' anxiety levels. We suggest social distance and counter-transference as partial explanations for the difficulties in identification and with differential perception.