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What Does ‘High Anxiety Sensitivity’ Look Like? Using Cluster Analysis to Identify Distinct Profiles of High Anxiety Sensitive Treatment-Seekers

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Abstract

Background/Purpose

Anxiety sensitivity (AS) is a transdiagnostic risk factor for mental health disorders. While its lower order factors – social, physical, and cognitive concerns – and their associations with emotional disorders have been examined independently of each other, research has not fully appreciated that these factors might appear to different degrees in individuals, with psychopathology implications.

Methods

We used cluster analysis to investigate how the lower order AS factors appear in treatment-seekers with high AS and how these manifestations of AS (i.e., the different clusters) are uniquely associated with psychopathology. Participants (N = 154; from two studies) were high AS treatment-seeking adults with anxiety and/or depressive disorders who completed a diagnostic interview and self-report measures of AS and anxiety and depression symptoms.

Results

A four-cluster solution emerged including a Multidimensional cluster (33.8% of the sample) and Social (28.6%), Physical (21.4%), and Cognitive (16.2%) clusters. Validation analyses revealed cross-cluster differences in age, gender, ethnicity, and psychopathology, the latter reflecting known associations between AS and mental health (e.g., depression symptoms were significantly highest in the Cognitive and Multidimensional clusters).

Conclusions

Results provide valuable insight into the heterogeneity of high AS as it appears clinically, with implications for best matching treatment approaches for this population.

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Funding

This study was funded by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Project Grant (148506) to Drs. Olthuis, Watt, & Stewart.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of New Brunswick, PO Box 4400, Fredericton, NB, E3B 5A3, Canada

    Janine V. Olthuis & Emma M. Connell

  2. Psychology Department, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS, Canada

    Margo C. Watt

  3. Departments of Psychology and Neuroscience, Psychiatry, and Community Health and Epidemiology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada

    Sherry H. Stewart

Authors
  1. Janine V. Olthuis
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  2. Emma M. Connell
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  3. Margo C. Watt
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  4. Sherry H. Stewart
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Contributions

Olthuis: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal Analysis, Writing – Original Draft; Connell: Data Curation; Writing – Reviewing and Editing; Watt: Conceptualization; Writing – Reviewing and Editing; Stewart: Conceptualization; Writing – Reviewing and Editing.

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Correspondence to Janine V. Olthuis.

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Olthuis, J.V., Connell, E.M., Watt, M.C. et al. What Does ‘High Anxiety Sensitivity’ Look Like? Using Cluster Analysis to Identify Distinct Profiles of High Anxiety Sensitive Treatment-Seekers. Cogn Ther Res 48, 337–349 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-024-10476-y

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