Autoimmune Diseases May Double Your Risk Of Depression And Anxiety

People with autoimmune diseases, which involve chronic inflammation in the body, are almost twice as likely to develop mental health problems such as depression and anxiety. This study of more than 1.5 million people in the UK suggests that inflammation in the body may be linked to our emotional well-being, reinforcing the connection between body and mind.

Autoimmune diseases are conditions where the immune system, which normally protects the body against viruses and bacteria, mistakenly attacks the body’s own healthy tissues. This can cause inflammation, pain and damage to specific organs or systems, such as the joints, skin, gut, brain or thyroid.

It is not yet known exactly why this happens, but genetic, hormonal and environmental factors may be involved.

Recent research has shown that our immune system, especially when it is constantly activated by inflammation, may have a direct link to our mental health. This means that, as well as affecting our bodies, inflammation can also influence how we feel emotionally, and may contribute to conditions such as depression and anxiety.

Previous studies have found that people with high levels of inflammation in their blood, measured by substances such as C-reactive protein (CRP) and interleukin-6 (IL-6), are more likely to develop symptoms of depression. These markers decrease when a person responds well to antidepressant treatment, which reinforces this link.

In addition, people with bipolar disorder or generalized anxiety disorder also tend to have higher signs of inflammation compared to healthy people. This can be seen both in the blood and in signs of inflammation in the brain.

To better understand this connection, scientists have begun to investigate whether reducing inflammation can help treat mental disorders.

Indeed, anti-inflammatory medications, used in conjunction with antidepressants or mood stabilizers, have shown positive, albeit modest, results in relieving symptoms. This suggests that chronic inflammation may play a role in the development of emotional disorders.

However, not all studies show a clear link between inflammation and mental health, in part because many of them have small numbers of participants, making it difficult to draw firm conclusions. Because measuring inflammation in thousands of people is expensive and laborious, scientists have been looking for ways to study this relationship in a more broad and accessible way.

One such alternative is to use data from large population-based studies, such as Our Future Health (OFH), a massive research project in the United Kingdom that aims to follow 5 million adults over time. As of 2025, more than 1.5 million people have participated. These people answered questions about their health, underwent physical examinations and donated blood, allowing scientists to cross-reference this information with medical data provided by the UK's public health system (NHS).

While not everyone has direct biomarkers of inflammation measured, people with autoimmune diseases such as lupus or rheumatoid arthritis can be considered to have chronic inflammation, since these conditions involve a constantly activated immune system.

In this study, researchers from the University of Edinburgh, UK, used this data to investigate whether people with autoimmune diseases had more mental health problems. They compared two groups: one of about 38,000 people who reported having one of six autoimmune diseases in their lifetime, and another of more than 1.5 million people without these diseases.

The results showed that people with autoimmune diseases had a significantly higher rate of mental disorders, such as depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder. For example, almost 29% of them reported some affective disorder in their lifetime, compared to 18% in the group without autoimmune diseases.

This figure shows that people with autoimmune diseases are more likely to also have mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety. Each graph represents a different type of affective disorder (such as depression, anxiety, or bipolar disorder), and the colored dots show the percentage of people with these conditions in different groups: those without autoimmune disease (on the left), those with any autoimmune disease (second dot), and then each of the six specific autoimmune diseases (such as lupus, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis). The dashed lines help compare the groups: the blue line represents the average for those with autoimmune disease, and the red line represents the average for those without. Across all the graphs, we see that rates of mental health issues are higher among those with autoimmune diseases, which reinforces the idea that chronic inflammation in the body can also influence emotional and psychological well-being.

They also had more symptoms of depression and anxiety at the time of the survey. Even after accounting for factors such as age, gender, ethnicity, income, chronic pain, and family history of emotional problems, people with autoimmune diseases still had an almost 50% higher risk of developing these disorders.

This study, with a large number of participants, reinforces the idea that living with chronic inflammation, as in the case of autoimmune diseases, can significantly increase the risk of developing mental health problems.

While the study does not prove that inflammation causes these disorders, it strongly suggests that there is an important link between the body and the mind. Future research should explore the mechanisms of this relationship in more depth so that new treatments can be developed.

READ MORE:

Affective disorders and chronic inflammatory conditions: analysis of 1.5 million participants in Our Future Health

Arish Mudra Rakshasa-Loots, Duncan Swiffen, Christina Steyn, Katie F M Marwick, and Daniel J Smith

BMJ Mental Health 2025;28:e301706.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjment-2025-301706

Abstract: 

Chronic inflammation is associated with psychiatric disorders. If inflammation is linked mechanistically to mental health, people living with chronic inflammatory conditions may experience mental health issues at higher rates than others. To test this hypothesis, we analysed data from 1 563 155 adults living in the UK within the newly launched UK-wide Our Future Health research cohort. Participants were split between two groups: people with self-reported lifetime diagnoses of six autoimmune conditions (n=37 808) and those without these diagnoses (n=1 525 347). Lifetime prevalence (95% CI) of self-reported lifetime diagnoses of any affective disorder (depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety) was significantly higher (p<0.001) among people with autoimmune conditions (28.8% (28.4% to 29.3%)) than in the general population (17.9% (17.8% to 18.0%)), with similar trends observed for individual affective disorders. Prevalence of current depressive symptoms (9-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) ≥10, 18.6% vs 10.5%) and current anxiety symptoms (7-item Generalised Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7) ≥8, 19.9% vs 12.9%) was also higher among people with autoimmune conditions. Odds of experiencing affective disorders, calculated using logistic regression models, were significantly higher in this group compared with the general population (OR (95% CI) = 1.86 (1.82 to 1.90), p<0.001), and these odds remained elevated when adjusting for the effects of age, sex, ethnicity (OR=1.75 (1.71 to 1.79), p<0.001) and additionally, for household income, parental history of affective disorders, chronic pain status and frequency of social interactions (OR=1.48 (1.44 to 1.52), p<0.001). Overall, the risk of affective disorders among people living with autoimmune conditions was nearly twice that of the general population.  Although the observational design of this study does not allow for direct inference of causal mechanisms, this analysis of a large national dataset suggests that chronic exposure to systemic inflammation may be linked to a greater risk for affective disorders. Future work should seek to investigate potential causal mechanisms for these associations.