Patients then score themselves based on how often they have experienced each of the problems listed above. Patients are asked to think about the following aspects of their mental health over the preceding two weeks: In their article A Brief Measure for Assessing Generalized Anxiety Disorder, they noted that there had previously been “no brief clinical measure for assessing GAD”.Īs the name suggests, GAD-7 consists of seven questions. It was first developed in 2006 by a team led by Robert Spitzer. More specifically, it screens patients generalised anxiety disorder, and also indicates the severity of the condition. GAD-7 is a self-report questionnaire for anxiety. We’ll also explain a little bit more about why these are such useful metrics for assessing reliability, providing examples along the way. In this article, we’ll put GAD-7 to the test by checking its sensitivity and specificity. However, you might be wondering how reliable GAD-7 is at correctly diagnosing this condition. It’s gained prominence thanks to its ease of use, with patients able to complete the test on their own. GAD-7 is one of the most commonly used methods for identifying probable cases of generalised anxiety disorder.
