The impact of comorbidity of depression on the course of anxiety treatments

Although anxiety disorder patients often present with comorbid disorders, little is known about differences in the course of the treatment due to comorbidity. The present study investigated whether cooccurring major depression predicts individual differences in the course of cognitive-behavioral treatment for panic disorder or social anxiety disorder in a total of 179 patients. Additionally, changes in depression scores were analyzed using growth-curve models. Overall, the results show comparable improvement for comorbid and noncomorbid patients. However, for patients with panic disorder and comorbid depression, anxiety scores were higher than for patients without comorbid conditions throughout the treatment. The results suggest that comorbid depression does not have a detrimental effect on the course of the anxiety treatment, but that the depression scores remain elevated at posttreatment.