Anxiety Sensitivity and Intolerance of Uncertainty as Factors Related to Adult Separation Anxiety Disorder Symptoms

There is a growing recognition that separation anxiety can occur in adults as reflected in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Yet adult separation anxiety disorder (ASAD) remains understudied. In particular, it is unclear to what extent the processes that contribute to other forms of anxiety may also be relevant to ASAD symptoms. Anxiety sensitivity (AS), the fear of arousal-related sensations and intolerance of uncertainty (IU), the dispositional tendency to fear the unknown, are frequently considered transdiagnostic contributing factors for pathological anxiety, but little work has studied these factors in relation to ASAD in particular. We administered measures of ASAD symptoms, IU, and AS, as well as trait anxiety to a sample of community adults (n = 761) recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Both AS and IU incrementally contributed to the concurrent prediction of ASAD symptoms controlling for demographic variables, trait anxiety, and one another. Although replication in a clinical sample is needed, IU and AS both warrant attention as potential contributing factors to ASAD symptoms. Targeting these processes might improve cognitive-behavioral treatments for ASAD.