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Patient-voice layer — generalized anxiety disorder

Purpose. To record what people living with generalized anxiety disorder say about it, as a body of evidence sitting alongside the trial and epidemiological literature — not as decoration for it. Where patient-reported priorities contradict the research agenda, that contradiction is content.

Files

File Contents
organizations.md Directory of patient and mental-health organisations relevant to GAD worldwide. Every entry was retrieved live on the stated access date; HTTP status and page title are recorded. Organisations that could not be verified are listed as unverified, and one that has closed is recorded as closed.
themes.md Thematic synthesis. Every theme rests on ≥2 independent sources and is reported in aggregate.
sources.md Annotated source list — peer-reviewed qualitative studies, organisation pages, and public statistics portals — with an honest coverage-limits note.

Method

  1. Peer-reviewed qualitative and patient-reported evidence was identified through PubMed E-utilities searches run on 2026-09-02, combining GAD/anxiety terms with qualitative, lived-experience, help-seeking, stigma, treatment-preference and withdrawal terms. Studies were included when participants were adults or young people with anxiety disorders (GAD-specific where available) and the study reported participants' own accounts.
  2. Organisation pages were retrieved directly by HTTP request on 2026-09-02; the HTTP status code and <title> element of each retrieved page were recorded. Sites returning 403/404 are marked as such rather than being described from memory.
  3. Themes were built only where at least two independent sources supported them, and are stated at the level of the group, never the individual.

Ethics rules observed (CONVENTIONS §3)

  • Public sources only. Nothing here comes from private forums, closed groups, clinical records, or any non-public communication.
  • Paraphrase over quotation. Quotations are ≤15 words and attributed to a published source, not to a person.
  • No identifying details of private individuals. No names, no locations, no ages tied to specific accounts, no reconstructable case descriptions. Organisation spokespeople and public figures may be named; none are named here because none were needed.
  • Aggregate reporting. Themes describe patterns across participants in published studies, never a single person's story.
  • Attributed testimony stays with its source. Where an organisation publishes lived-experience narratives on its own site, this layer records that the material exists and what kind of material it is; it does not reproduce individual stories.
  • No inference about individuals. Nothing here should be read as describing, diagnosing, or characterising any particular person.

Scope boundary

This layer covers generalized anxiety disorder. Where a source addresses anxiety disorders as a group, that is stated explicitly, because a pooled anxiety-disorder finding is not a GAD finding — the same rule that governs the wiki pages. Perinatal and paediatric material is included where GAD-relevant and cross-linked to special populations. PTSD is a neighbouring condition curated separately.

Last curated: 2026-09-02.