Identifying specific and transdiagnostic correlates of depression and anxiety symptoms in youth has important implications for prevention and treatment. The field has moved toward the development of promising transdiagnostic treatments for youth anxiety and depression (e.g., Craske 2012; Ehrenreich-May and Bilek 2012). Transdiagnostic treatments may offer a number of benefits over disorder-specific approaches, including the potential to better address comorbidity in youth and a consolidation of resources for clinicians in real world settings. Although these symptoms frequently co-occur and have potentially shared mechanisms of risk, it is important to also recognize that these symptoms also have specific factors that may impact intervention. Additionally, findings inform specific risk and protective factors for depressive symptoms in youth, suggesting that youth experiencing elevated depressive symptoms may uniquely benefit from learning certain coping skills. While transdiagnostic treatment protocols may address a number of useful skills for both symptoms of anxiety and depression in youths, specific predictors of symptoms in youth should not be overlooked. Future work that focuses on the use of stringent tests of specificity to identify those mechanisms that are truly transdiagnostic
