The Rating of Clinical Anxiety

Many scales and inventories have been introduced for the rating of anxiety. They can be divided into those aimed at assessing “trait anxiety” (habitual anxiousness), and those designed to rate “state anxiety” (anxiety at that moment). The former are essentially personality inventories and include the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale, the 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire of Cattell and the Eysenck Personality Inventory. Clinical rating scales are primarily mood assessment instruments and include simple linear scales, the Hamilton Anxiety Scale, the Lipman Scale, the Psychiatric Outpatient Mood Scales, the Cornell Medical Index and the Morbid Anxiety Inventory. These various scales together with many others are reviewed, their advantages and disadvantages listed and recommendations made for the rating of trait and state anxiety. The importance of distinguishing between scales which establish diagnostic profiles and those which measure changes in the severity of symptoms is emphasized.