Should you treat anxiety or depression first?
Written by the clinical team at The Lyceum Clinic. Clinically reviewed by Sanah Younis, Founder and Clinical Director, BABCP-accredited (no. 1000792). Published 28 October 2026. Last reviewed 28 October 2026.
Clinical perspective: A senior CBT therapist at The Lyceum.
It depends which is doing the draining. If depression is severe enough that getting out of bed is hard, exposure work for anxiety will fail for want of energy, so we lift mood first. If anxiety is burning the energy and causing the low mood, we target anxiety.
Why sequence matters
Both treatments are demanding. Running the wrong one first does not just waste weeks, it teaches the person that treatment does not work for them.
Starting with mood
Behavioural activation comes first: small, mechanical actions taken before the motivation arrives, because action precedes motivation rather than following it.
For more detail, read about CBT for low mood.
Starting with anxiety
Where the anxiety is the engine, stopping the drain lifts the mood without treating it directly.