Citation

Joiner TE, Steer RA, Beck AT, Schmidt NB, Rudd MD, Catanzaro SJ. J. Abnorm. Psychol. 1999; 108(2): 290-298.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee 32306-1270, USA. joiner@psy.fsu.edu

Copyright

(Copyright © 1999, American Psychological Association)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

10369039

Abstract

Physiological hyperarousal (PH) is an understudied component of the tripartite model of depression and anxiety. This study contributes to the literature on PH, the tripartite model, and anxiety and its disorders, using data from psychotherapy outpatients (n = 2,448), air force cadets (n = 1,335), and undergraduates (n = 284). Psychometrics and exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses showed that PH is a reliable, cohesive, discriminable, and valid construct. Compared with subjective anxiety, PH was more associated to panic versus mood disordered status, and to panic versus generalized anxiety disordered status. As hypothesized, an aspect of anxiety sensitivity (i.e., fear of body sensations) was particularly related to subjective anxiety in the presence of PH.

RESULTS support the PH construct as replicable, valid, and clinically important and support the utility of the tripartite and related models for understanding the relation of depressive and anxious syndromes.

Language: en