Anxiety Scales

Anxiety scales make visible the form anxiety takes in a given person and how intensely it has been experienced recently. The instruments grouped here are not interchangeable; each one captures a different face of anxiety. The Beck Anxiety Inventory foregrounds bodily symptoms such as palpitations, trembling and shortness of breath. The GAD-7 screens for the cognitive side of generalized anxiety — worry, restlessness and tension over the past two weeks — in a very short form. The Panic Attack Test focuses on sudden surges of fear that peak within minutes. The Social Anxiety / Social Phobia Scale assesses how far the fear of being judged restricts functioning in social situations.

In practice the choice of instrument follows the complaint the client describes: when bodily symptoms dominate, one tool is more informative; when persistent worry dominates, another is. Anxiety scales are also valuable for monitoring, because administering the same scale at the beginning, middle and end of therapy turns change into a number that can be tracked. The pages below explain what each scale measures, how many items it contains, who it is intended for, and what its score levels mean.