Anxiety and stress vulnerability and substance problems: Theory, empirical evidence, and directions for future research

This introductory paper briefly reviews each of seven manuscripts in the present special series, the purpose of which was to provide a forum for the systematic presentation of theory, empirical evidence, and directions for future work as it pertains to anxiety and stress-related vulnerability processes and drug and alcohol problems. Articles in the series were selected to highlight a broad range of research on these topics. Whereas past work has largely focused on issues of psychiatric comorbidity, the articles in this series collectively suggest focusing on emotion vulnerability processes and the contexts in which they operate is a particularly valuable and promising pursuit. Each of the contributions also highlights the importance of developing models that explicitly integrate both basic and applied research in order to 1) effectively translate basic research findings to the applied realm, and 2) cast them in a nomological net. Finally, many of the articles noted that there is a pressing need to document theoretically relevant mediating and moderating processes involved with anxiety/stress and drug/alcohol problems in order to meaningfully move towards specialized intervention approaches.