The spectrum of anxiety from ‘normal’ anxiety to disorder

Fear and anxiety are experienced on a spectrum, stretching from basic ‘normal’ emotions to the categorical phenotypes of anxiety disorders.¹

Whilst much progress has been made in studying anxiety, it has been proposed that the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) – that attempt to develop an interdisciplinary science of psychopathology, creating a set of research principles to better investigate mental disorder – may be used to investigate the pathology underlying anxiety disorders, although there are challenges to doing to so.²