Comorbidity between balance and anxiety disorders: Verification in a normal population

Comorbidity between balance and anxiety disorders has been documented in clinical psychiatric and neurological samples. The authors aimed to determine whether the comorbidity of balance and anxiety disorders has an analogous representation in the normal population. Participants were 20 undergraduate students ages 22-29 years. The authors assigned them to high or low trait anxiety groups and performed a balance task in 3 experimental stages: baseline, training, and test. The baseline and test stages consisted of 4 wobbly and 4 stable trials each. The authors measured state anxiety in the form of auditory startle responses (ASRs) during the stable trials. In the baseline stage, the ASR amplitudes were higher in the high trait anxiety participants. In the test stage, the low trait anxiety participants performed the balance task better than the high trait anxiety participants did. These data suggest that the clinical entity designated as a comorbidity of balance and anxiety disorders has an analogous representation in the normal population.