ABSTRACT
Deepening understanding of the nature of emotional disorders reveals that commonalities in etiology and latent structure among these disorders supercedes differences. In the 1960s, cognitive behavioral approaches to treating emotional disorders such as anxiety and mood disorders began to emanate from basic psychological science; specifically, theories and data pertaining to learning, emotional development and regulation and, somewhat later, cognitive science. To justify a relatively radical new and unified psychological approach to treating emotional disorders, it is important to provide some background. One argument for a unified treatment approach to emotional disorders is the facilitation of dissemination and training focused on a single set of therapeutic principles rather than diverse protocols. Antecedent cognitive reappraisal in each of the emotional disorders is easily categorized into overestimating the probability of a negative event happening and exaggerating the consequences of that negative effect if it did happen.
