Misery Loves Company: The Co-morbidity of Depression and Anxiety Disorders

You may have wondered why my previous posts talk so much about depression when the title of this blog states that it's concerned with ROCD. Well, wonder no longer. If you read my previous post (The Unbearable Uncertainty of Psychiatric Medicine), you know that I've been diagnosed with depression and, later, agitated depression. So why am I so concerned with ROCD? Because I believe I suffer from it in addition to depression, but that my OCD has been overlooked.

And there's at least some reason to think I might be right. Studies have shown that roughly 50% of patients in the community who are diagnosed with a mood disorder (such as depression or bipolar disorder) also meet the criteria for an anxiety disorder (such as generalized anxiety disorder, OCD, or panic disorder). Among those in primary care situations (whose condition is presumably worse),that figure is 75%. In other words, about half of those who suffer from depression also have an anxiety disorder. Why? That's less clear. Researchers have several competing hypotheses. One is that mood and anxiety disorders are caused by very similar biological mechanisms. Afterall, both seem to respond to the same medications, so it makes sense to postulate that they share a common root. Still, while many people with one disorder have the other, not all of them do, so this can't be the whole story.

Another viable hypothesis is that the two types of disorder feed into each other. If you spend a good part of your day feeling anxious or obsessing over the reality of your love, you're probably not going to be very happy, are you? Likewise, if you're feeling down all the time, you're likely to find yourself worrying about the future more than most.

These are both theories for now - we know that depression and anxiety are often co-morbid, but we don't know why. Have any of you been diagnosed with both a mood and anxiety disorder? Or are any of you (like me) convinced that you have both even though you've only been diagnosed with one? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.