The breadth of NESARC 2011 studies on substance use and psychiatric disorders illustrates continuing interest in understanding the implications of comorbidity in terms of etiology, course and treatment. Findings on personality disorder indicate the importance of addressing a broader range than just antisocial personality disorder. Work that expands our understanding of meta-structure by including new disorders into the analyses is important, as is understanding whether studies of propensities to broad dimensions of psychopathology can be informative about genetic and environmental risk factors. NESARC studies on incidence and persistence have started to utilize this unique source of information about prospectively studied natural history. The 2011 NESARC work on substance use and psychiatric comorbidity points to numerous directions for future research.
