Comorbid depressive and anxiety disorders are commonly seen in both primary care and the specialty setting. Such comorbidity can present as major depression with subsyndromal anxiety symptoms or unipolar/bipolar depression comorbid with an anxiety disorder. The following Tipsheets offer general guidelines and are adapted from a previously published article in Psychiatric Times, “Depression and Comorbid Anxiety: An Overview of Pharmacological Options.”

Several easy-to-use self-rated scales are available for monitoring symptoms:

• Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (42-item or shorter 21-item)

• Beck Depression Inventory

• Beck Anxiety Inventory

• Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale

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