title: Cognitive vulnerability to comorbidity: looming cognitive style and depressive cognitive style as synergistic predictors of anxiety and depression symptoms.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Because anxiety and depression are highly comorbid, it is likely that individuals with co-occurring cognitive vulnerabilities to depression and anxiety will experience more severe symptoms of anxiety and depression. However, no study to date has examined the effects of co-occurring (simultaneous) cognitive vulnerabilities to depression and anxiety on the severity of symptoms.
  
  
  METHODS
  The present study examines the co-occurring effects of Alloy and Abramson's (1999) Negative Cognitive Style, a vulnerability to depression, and Riskind's (2000) looming cognitive style, a vulnerability to anxiety.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Results indicated that those with co-occurring vulnerabilities experience a more severe level of anxiety and depression symptoms.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The present study used a measure of symptoms rather than actual clinical diagnoses.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These findings address the previously ignored area of cognitive vulnerability to comorbidity. Co-occurring cognitive vulnerabilities to anxiety and depression synergistically confer risk for more severe anxiety and depression symptoms than the individual or additive effects of either vulnerability do alone.
authors: Department of Psychology, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA. ekleiman@gmu.edu
authors: Evan M
authors: EM
authors: Kleiman
authors: John H
authors: JH
authors: Riskind
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D003071:Cognition; D003863:Depression / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011594:Psychometrics; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires