The relative specificity of excessive reassurance-seeking to depressive symptoms and diagnoses among clinical samples of adults and youth

In addition to playing a role in the deterioration of depressed people's in terpersonal environment, excessive reassurance-seeking may be implicated as a vulnerability factor for depression. If so, excessive reassurance-seekin g should display relative specificity to depression versus other forms of p sychopathology. Two studies of psychiatric inpatients (Study 1 on adults an d Study 2 on children) tested this possibility. In Study 1 a Depressed grou p obtained higher reassurance-seeking scores than an Other Disorders group did. Similar findings were obtained in Study 2, such that depressed youth r eported higher reassurance-seeking than nondepressed youth. Hence, these tw o studies of psychiatric inpatients provided reasonable support for the spe cificity of excessive reassurance-seeking to depression as compared to othe r forms of psychopathology.