Anxiety disorders are prevalent and often untreated in the primary care setting, and 2 screening tests are useful in detecting anxiety disorders, according to the results of a criterion-standard study reported in the March 6 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.
"Anxiety often manifests as a physical symptom like pain, fatigue, or inability to sleep, so it is not surprising that one out of five patients who come to a doctor's office with a physical complaint have anxiety," lead author Kurt Kroenke, MD, from the Regenstrief Institute for Health Care and Indiana University in Indianapolis, Indiana, said in a news release. "The seven-question GAD-7 [Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7] and remarkably even the two-question 'ultra brief' version gives the physician a tool to quantify the patient's symptoms — sort of a lab test for anxiety."
Between November 2004 and June 2005 at 15 US primary care clinics, 965 randomly sampled patients from consecutive clinic patients who completed a self-report questionnaire and agreed to a follow-up telephone interview were evaluated with a 7-item anxiety measure (GAD-7 scale). This was followed by a telephone-administered, structured psychiatric interview by a mental health professional blinded to the GAD-7 results. Other outcomes were functional status on the Medical Outcomes Study Short Form-20, depressive and somatic symptoms, and self-reported disability days and clinician visits.
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