Comorbidity between depression and anxiety: assessing the role of bridge mental states in dynamic psychological networks
Published in BMC Medicine, 2020
Recommended citation: Groen, R. N., Ryan, O., Wigman, J. T., Riese, H., Penninx, B. W., Giltay, E. J., Wichers, M. & Hartman, C. A. (2020). Comorbidity between depression and anxiety: assessing the role of bridge mental states in dynamic psychological networks. BMC medicine, 18(1), 1-17. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12916-020-01738-z
Comorbidity between depressive and anxiety disorders is common. A hypothesis of the network perspective on psychopathology is that comorbidity arises due to the interplay of symptoms shared by both disorders, with overlapping symptoms acting as so-called bridges, funneling symptom activation between symptom clusters of each disorder. This study investigated this hypothesis by testing whether (i) two overlapping mental states “worrying” and “feeling irritated” functioned as bridges in dynamic mental state networks of individuals with both depression and anxiety as compared to individuals with either disorder alone, and (ii) overlapping or non-overlapping mental states functioned as stronger bridges.