A global, everyday burden
Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent group of mental health conditions worldwide. The World Health Organization estimates that around 301 million people lived with an anxiety disorder in 2019 (WHO). Many more experience clinically significant anxiety that never receives a formal diagnosis.
Beyond diagnosed disorders, situational anxiety - before an operation, a scan or a medical procedure - affects a large share of the patients moving through the health system every day.
Anxiety in medical settings
In hospitals and clinics, anxiety is rarely the reason for the visit, yet it shapes almost every step. Patients report anxiety before surgery and anaesthesia, during procedures such as endoscopies, punctures or imaging (MRI, CT), throughout oncology treatment, and in long-stay and palliative care.
It matters because anxious patients are harder to prepare and to care for: cooperation, comfort and experience all suffer, and distress adds load to already stretched teams.
Why it stays under-treated
Medication has a place, but it comes with trade-offs: side effects, interactions, and caution in fragile or poly-medicated patients. Psychological therapies work, yet access is limited by cost, waiting lists and a shortage of trained professionals.
The result is a persistent gap: effective, non-pharmacological, immediate and reproducible tools that can be used at the moment anxiety actually peaks remain scarce.
What a better tool looks like
Clinicians and researchers converge on the same wish-list: approaches that are substance-free, quick to deploy, measurable, and usable across many settings rather than a single niche.
Recent advances in immersive technology and physiological measurement are beginning to meet that brief - the subject of the next articles in this series.