Network Analysis of Anxiety in Prostate Cancer Patients

Background: A large proportion of prostate cancer (PCa) patients also report being anxious, which can impede their recovery and adversely influence their personal relationships.

Aims: In order to better understand the relationships between symptoms of anxiety in these men, with a view towards more informed treatments for anxiety, the network structure of the symptomatology for Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) was examined in this study.

Methods: A total of 425 PCa patients completed the GAD‐7 and an extended version of that inventory (the GAD‐10). Data were analysed via Network Analysis, Pearson correlation coefficients, and ANOVA.

Results: Network analysis and multidimensional scaling indicated that being unable to control worry was the most central symptom for these men, and that several sets of GAD symptoms were closely associated with each other. These included worrying, inability to relax, and restlessness. Other anxiety symptoms such as sleeping problems, difficulty concentrating, and feeling tyred were less well‐related with the remainder of the network. Implications for clinical practice were derived from the relationships between individual anxiety symptoms and the overall anxiety network by examining node predictability, and focused upon helping these men to ‘switch off’ from their worry by engaging in mutually‐incompatible behaviours.

Conclusions: The use of total anxiety inventory scores fails to identify the underlying network structure of anxiety in PCa patients. By finding the central GAD symptom of being unable to control their worry, more individually‐focussed anti‐anxiety treatments might be developed and offered to these men.