Comorbidity in clinical psychology research 1980-2014: Publication trends and topics in the Anglo-American versus the German-speaking countries

Beitrag aus der Reihe "ZPID Science Information Online"

Objectives: Description of developmental trends and topics in clinical psychological research on comorbidity between 1980 and 2014. Methods: Scientometric analyses of the databases PsycINFO and PSYNDEX were performed to determine the publication frequency of contributions on comorbidity in the Anglo-American versus German-speaking clinical psychology research community. Results: It is shown that (1) in both research communities comorbidity is the focus in only 2% of the clinical psychological publications; (2) there is a modest increase of publications on comorbidity over time; (3) the frequency of publications on comorbidity in the Anglo-American countries has dropped since the millennium, while there has been a steady increase in the German-speaking countries; (4) comorbidity is most frequently studied in publications with a more basic research approach that refer to pathology, epidemiology, aetiology, and classification of disorders; (5) only one third of the comorbidity publications refer to more applied research on clinical treatment and prevention; (6) the literature on specific comorbidity diagnoses is rare in the German-speaking countries and even more rare in the Anglo-American research community. Conclusions: Clinical psychology publications on comorbidity are rare. The problems of comorbidity diagnoses in general and the limitations of the scientometric results presented here are discussed.