Screening for generalized anxiety disorder in geriatric primary care patients

Abstract

To compare two brief screening measures as tools for detecting generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) among older primary care patients. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis was used to compare the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and the Brief Symptom Inventory-18 (BSI-18) against GAD diagnoses obtained from a structured diagnostic interview. The HADS Anxiety subscale was the only measure that distinguished individuals with and without GAD. A cutpoint greater than or equal to 8 on the HADS Anxiety subscale resulted in a sensitivity of 0.967 and a specificity of 0.667 for detecting GAD. The HADS Anxiety subscale appears to show some advantages over the BSI-18 Anxiety subscale as a brief, self-report measure of anxiety symptoms among older medical patients.