Prior studies including the European Study of the Epidemiology of Mental Disorders, the International Consortium for Psychiatric Epidemiology, and various reports generated from epidemiologic studies of general populations from 10 high-income countries (Jane-Llopis et al., 2006) suggested that comorbidity patterns were consistent cross-nationally (Merikangas et al., 1998). Specifically, these reports indicated that mood or anxiety disorders were more prevalent among people with SUD (particularly illicit drugs) than vice versa (Jane-Llopis et al., 2006). The striking disparity observed in Korea, however, showed that a substantially greater proportion of Koreans with a mood or anxiety disorder reported having comorbid AD than vice versa.
