Treatment of comorbid anxiety disorders and substance use disorder

This chapter highlights the benefits that could be gained by approaching the problem of anxiety and substance abuse much more broadly in both a “horizontal” and “vertical” sense. It overviews and critiques work related to clinical comorbidity with suggestions for future research and clinical approaches aimed at overcoming the problems identified. Treatment studies can probe the nature of comorbidity in terms of how the treatment-induced offset of an index disorder affects the likelihood of the offset of the comorbid disorder. In the course of their work, the authors have identified a number of issues that we believe continue to inhibit the field from obtaining a better understanding of and better treatments for comorbidity. Three of these issues considered to be the most pressing are considered in the chapter.