Treatment Statistics.
U.S. data on who gets anxiety treatment, what kind, and how well it works. Citations on every number.
Most adults who meet criteria for an anxiety disorder do not receive treatment, and among those who do, only a fraction receive care that meets survey definitions for minimal adequacy. The treatments that are studied most, especially cognitive behavioral therapy, work: meta-analyses report moderate effect sizes against control conditions and remission in roughly half of patients. The gap is less about whether good care exists and more about whether people reach it.
Key numbers at a glance
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Source by source
NCS-R treatment-utilization estimates
Report that about 36.9 percent of adults with any anxiety disorder received some treatment in the past year, and of those treated, about 33.9 percent received care meeting an operational definition of minimal adequacy.
Carpenter et al., 2018 meta-analysis
Pooled placebo-controlled trials of cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety disorders and reported a Hedges' g near 0.56, a moderate effect, with mean remission near half of patients.
Dropout meta-analyses
Report meaningful attrition from psychotherapy. Estimates for generalized anxiety disorder cluster near 17 percent for individual therapy, while older broad estimates across conditions run substantially higher, underscoring how much definitions and settings matter.
What the data isn't
- ·The any-treatment figure counts any contact, including a single visit or a prescription, so it overstates how many people received a full course of evidence-based care.
- ·Minimal adequacy is an operational survey threshold, not a clinical judgment that the care was right for the person.
- ·Effect sizes describe average group differences in trials with selected samples; an individual's response can be larger, smaller, or absent.
- ·Dropout rates vary widely by disorder, therapy type, and study design, so a single headline dropout number hides a lot of spread.
Sources
How to cite
Treatment statistics, AnxietyResearch.org, drawing on National Comorbidity Survey Replication treatment-utilization estimates and Carpenter et al. (2018) meta-analysis of CBT for anxiety. Accessed 2026-06-24. https://anxietyresearch.org/statistics/treatment-statistics
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