Compared with depression, anxiety symptoms and disorders have generated far lessattention in studies of midlife women despite the prevalence of anxiety and their associationwith distress, impaired quality of life, and vasomotor symptoms (VMS). Indeed, studies thatfocus on anxiety symptoms or syndromes usually focus on their association with VMSrather than with menopausal status per se (9-11; 12). Nevertheless, a greater understandingof the unique influence of the menopausal transition on the occurrence of anxiety symptomsand syndromes is important as anxiety is not only prevalent in community populations, butis also a problem frequently reported to health care providers by midlife women (13; 14).