Comorbidity in social phobia: implications for cognitive-behavioral treatment

As our system of nosology evolves and continues to split into more tightly defined discrete disorders, the issue of comorbidity looms larger. The fact of extensive comorbidity has implications for conceptualizing the nature of psychopathology as well as its treatment. The author presents recent conceptualizations of the nature of anxiety and the relationship of social phobic features to more generalized anxiety. After discussing new data on the treatment of social phobia from a cognitive-behavioral perspective, he reviews new findings demonstrating patterns of extensive comorbidity that have emerged from research at the Center for Stress and Anxiety Disorders at the University at Albany, State University of New York. The implications of comorbidity for integrated treatment of social phobia are then discussed.