Screening for generalized anxiety disorder in geriatric primary care patients

OBJECTIVE: To compare two brief screening measures as tools for detecting generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) among older primary care patients. METHODS: 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. RESULTS: 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. CONCLUSIONS: 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.