Comorbidity fails to account for the relationship of expressed emotion and perceived criticism to treatment outcome in patients with anxiety disorders.

This study was designed to test the hypothesis that comorbidity mediates the relationship between expressed emotion, perceived criticism (PC), and treatment outcome in anxiety disorders. Although comorbid major depression and Axis II traits were related to poor outcome in agoraphobic and obsessive-compulsive outpatients, these variables did not prove to be mediators of drop-out or treatment outcome. A secondary aim was to examine whether PC predicted change in symptoms of depression. Even when posttreatment anxiety severity and comorbidity were controlled, PC accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in change on the Symptom Checklist-90-R depression scale.