The Nature, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Neuroticism

We highlight the role of neuroticism in the development and course of emotional disorders and make a case for shifting the focus of intervention to this higher-order dimension of personality. Recent decades have seen great emphasis placed on differentiating disorders into Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders diagnoses; however, evidence has suggested that splitting disorders into such fine categories may be highlighting relatively trivial differences. Emerging research on the latent structure of anxiety and mood disorders has indicated that trait neuroticism, cultivated through genetic, neurobiological, and psychological factors, underscores the development of these disorders. We raise the…