Anxiety, Substance Use, and Their Co-Occurrence: Advances in Clinical Science

Abstract

Research and clinical literatures are replete with examples that psychological disorders are related to drug use, abuse, and dependence. The preponderance of scientific work addressing relations among psychopathological processes and drug use, abuse, and dependence has been focused primarily on psychotic disorders, major depression, antisocial personality disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. This corpus of empirical work has indicated that there are clinically meaningful relations among particular types of psychopathology and the onset and maintenance of substance use behaviors and disorders and, in turn, that substance use and use-related problems can impact vulnerability for psychopathology. Within this public health context, it is striking that despite the fact that anxiety disorders are one of the most common classes of psychological problems (Kessler et al., 2005), there has been limited programmatic study of the relations between anxiety vulnerability processes and substance use disorders.

Investigating a Self-Management Strategy for Symptoms of Attention-Deficit Hyperactive Disorder and Drug Use.

“…Most research addressing relationships between self-management processes and substance use has focused primarily on psychotic disorders, antisocial personality disorder, and mood disorders (Zvolensky, Buckner, Norton, & Smits, 2011). However, research has also indicated that self-management processes are negatively related to the consumption of nicotine, alcohol and other drugs (Connolly, Noel, & Mezo, 2017;Foxx & Axelroth, 1983;Khantzian, 1990).…”

Investigating a Self-Management Harm Reduction Strategy for Symptoms of Attention-Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, Nicotine Dependence, Alcohol use, and Drug Use

“…Simply put, it may be understood in terms of the processes that guide the setting and achievement of goals (46). Most research addressing relationships between self-management processes and substance use has focused primarily on psychotic disorders, antisocial personality disorder, and mood disorders (47). However, research has also indicated that self-management processes are negatively related to the consumption of nicotine, alcohol and other drugs (48; 49).…”

Handbook of Assessing Variants and Complications in Anxiety Disorders

“…Although there has been a long-standing recognition that anxiety psychopathology and substance use disorders often cooccur, scienti fi c attention devoted to understanding the underlying nature of these relations has been limited (Zvolensky, Buckner, Norton, & Smits, 2011 ) . This gap in knowledge is unfortunate, as there are (a) high prevalence rates of anxiety and substance use disorders among treatment-seeking as well as the general population; and (b) relations between these conditions are important to their onset, maintenance, and course.…”