Comorbidity of Depression and Anxiety Disorders: the Emergence of Transdiagnostic Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

Comorbidity of depression and anxiety disorders has been reported 40 to 80 percent in most of the epidemiology researches and these conditions impose a lot of direct and indirect cost on society. Using specialized cognitive-behavioral therapeutic protocols based on the challenges of comorbidity may not be affordable. Pay attention to the comorbidity of depression and anxiety disorders and response to its challenges is not possible except through the formulation of the solutions which consider the issue theoretically and practically. Transdiagnostic treatments are prerogative of this new perspective on the development of a therapeutic protocol. Transdiagnostic approach tries to resolve the therapeutic challenges and concerns of comorbidity by addressing the theoretical nature of comorbidity and also addressing the common dimensions of emotional disorders especially depression and anxiety disorders in formulating a unified therapeutic protocol. Efforts done in this field resulted in the design of several transdiagnostic protocols which differed in the selection of approved and common techniques of specialized cognitive-behavioral treatments. Although trial research which has done in this field supported the moderate effectiveness of these untheoretical and pragmatic transdiagnostic protocols, it was a turning point for improving the effectiveness level of transdiagnostic approach. Researches in this field tried to overcome this problem by matching these protocols on the theoretical and pathological ground. The milestone of the attempts and orientations was in transdiagnostic protocol of Barlow et al. (2011), they took the first step in designing the theoretical transdiagnostic protocols by using the factor of emotion regulation and its related theories. Despite progress in developing and enriching theoretical transdiagnostic protocols, recent scientific controversies in this field focus on the selection of process or fundamental processes.