Cognitive vulnerability to comorbidity: looming cognitive style and depressive cognitive style as synergistic predictors of anxiety and depression symptoms.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES 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. METHOD 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. LIMITATIONS The present study used a measure of symptoms rather than actual clinical diagnoses. CONCLUSION 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.