ANXIETY, AGING AND THE 3RD EMERGENCY REACTION

Severe anxiety, unlike severe depression, is not common among the aged. In view of the multitude of stresses accompanying later life and considering the fact that lack of success in mastering stress typically produces anxiety, one should expect a high frequency of anxiety among the aged. To explain the deficit, it is proposed that those who survive into old age have developed strategies to successfully deal with stress, that among these strategies is a passive stance, termed 'freeze,' and that 'freeze' is a third emergency reaction, one which was omitted from the fight-flight paradigm of emergency reactions.