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