ABSTRACT
Is comorbidity an artifact of our current way of conceptualizing and defining mental disorders, or does it provide useful information in terms of etiology, pathogenesis, and therapeutic or preventive issues? This remains a core question despite the fact that many researchers have addressed it in the past two decades from various perspectives. The main obstacle for a better understanding of comorbidity is the fact that researchers still define and evaluate comorbidity with a considerable degree of variability in terms, for example, of the scope of disorders considered, consideration of temporal relationships among each other, and the level of detail with regard to both predictors and critical outcomes (e.g., disability, treatment response). As a result, the literature sometimes has a confusing mix of partly contradictory findings. It seems fair to state that this situation applies not only to mood and anxiety disorders in general but also to social anxiety disorder (SAD) in particular. This chapter begins with a brief discussion of critical conceptual issues and then reviews several facets of comorbidity in social anxiety disorder, emphasizing potential etiological and clinical implications.
