Anxiety, Depression and the Internalizing Spectrum

Pathological mental health problems in children and young adults have been classified into externalizing (substance abuse, conduct disorder etc) and internalizing disorders (depression , anxiety etc). Today’s post will try to  work out the structure of this internalizing spectrum. English: An anxious person (Photo credit: Wikipedia) The first major difference, that is made in say DSM, is between Mood disorders (disturbance in mood) and Anxiety disorders (characterized by anxiety and avoidance behaviors) . However, Watson in this article (pdf) emphasizes that this classification is not proper and in many cases these disorder say depression (say MDD) and Anxiety (say Panic disorder) are co-morbid with each other. To explain this as well as other genotypical and phenotypical findings, Watson has developed a structure of these ‘distress disorders’ – however the road was long, an intermediate stop was tripartite model of depression/anxiety. According to this tripartite model (developed by Watson and Clark), both depression (MDD, dysthymia etc)  and anxiety disorders (phobia, panic etc) share a common non-specific factor called Negative Affect (NA) which is characterized by things like preponderance of negative emotions like sadness, fear, guilt, anger etc as well as irritability, difficulty concentrating etc. Depressive disorders meanwhile are specifically characterized by lack of Positive Affect (PA), which means less emotions like happiness, interest et...
Source: The Mouse Trap - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: depression mental illness anxiety Mental disorder Mood disorder Source Type: podcasts