Interest in the assessment of quality of life in the anxiety disorders is growing. The present study examined quality of life impairments in individuals with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Social Phobia, and Panic Disorder. Results showed that individuals with these disorders reported less satisfaction with their quality of life than non-anxious adults in the community. However, the degree of quality of life impairment is similar across these three disorders. Additionally, comorbid depression, but not anxiety, was found to negatively impact quality of life in these individuals. Finally, diagnostic symptom severity was not found to influence quality of life, indicating that subjective measures of quality of life offer unique information on the effects of anxiety disorders.

BACKGROUND Transdiagnostic cognitive-behavioral treatments for anxiety disorders have been gaining increased attention and empirical study in recent years. Despite this, research on transdiagnostic anxiety treatments has, to date, relied on open trials, or comparisons to waitlist conditions, published benchmarks, or relaxation-based interventions. METHODS The current study was a randomized clinical trial examining the efficacy of a 12-week transdiagnostic cognitive-behavioral group treatment in comparison to 12-week diagnosis-specific group CBT protocols for panic disorder, social anxiety disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. RESULTS Results from 46 treatment initiators suggested significant improvement during treatment, strong evidence for treatment equivalence across transdiagnostic and diagnosis-specific CBT conditions, and no differences in treatment credibility. CONCLUSIONS This study provides evidence supporting the efficacy of transdiagnostic CBT by comparison to current gold-standard diagnosis-specific CBT for social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and panic disorder. Transdiagnostic group CBT has the benefit of potentially easing dissemination and increasing access to evidence based treatments for anxiety without sacrificing efficacy.

Research suggests that test anxiety is associated with a number of maladaptive factors. The majority of test anxiety research includes the Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI) as a primary outcome variable. However, the TAI was normed on college undergraduates in 1980. The academic landscape has altered in a variety of ways in the past 30 years, which may result in out-of-date norms. This study examined changes in TAI scores in college undergraduates (n =437) as well as convergent validity with measures of trait anxiety and academic performance. Results indicated increases in TAI scores for females while holding constant for males. Additionally, females and males displayed positive correlations between the TAI and state-trait anxiety inventory, while only females displayed a significant negative correlation between the TAI and grade point average. Data provide evidence of changes in TAI scores. As a result, researchers should be careful when drawing conclusions based on original TAI norms, especially in the case of female undergraduates.

These results suggest that transdiagnostic cognitive-behavioral group treatment for anxiety may be associated with greater decreases in comorbidity than traditional diagnosis-specific CBT.

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