<p><strong>Background:</strong> Anxiety is one of the mental disorders that has been on the rise in recent times, affecting a large part of the world's population and at different ages. It is also related to depression and somatic problems. From this approach, it is recognized that school children are one of the most prevalent populations and their numbers vary depending on the research consulted due to the different instruments applied.</p>
<p><strong>Objective:</strong> The aim is to explore the prevalence of anxiety disorder in secondary education students.</p>
<p><strong>Method:</strong> Articles published in any language were taken into account. The Web of Science (WOS), Scielo, Dialnet, Elsevier, Clinicalkey, Mendeley, Google Scholar and PubMed have been used as search engines, and the period was established as from 2004 to 2019.&nbsp; The search was restricted to journal articles. For the Spanish search we used the descriptors "prevalence", "anxiety" in the title section, and the descriptor "secondary education", "adolescents" and "high school students" throughout the document. For the search of publications in English, we used the descriptors "prevalence", "anxiety", "college students" and "teenagers" and as operators boleanos and y or.</p>
<p><strong>Results:</strong> Six articles were identified as meeting the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The prevalence rates found varied due to the different instruments used in the different studies, making their comparison complex. However, it can be noted that the incidence in the prevalence of moderate anxiety prevails over high rates of anxiety.</p>