How To Measure Anxiety-Get Anxiety Scales

Tuesday, December 2, 2008 18:16
Posted in category Anxiety Disorder

There are many anxiety scales that exist, designed to measure the severity of certain anxiety disorders. You will easily find simplified versions of many anxiety scales on the internet, so you can test yourself, just to check, before going to see your doctor, who will in most of the cases measure and determine the severity of your anxiety partly by using anxiety scales.

 

Your health care provider may also measure your anxiety after the treatment, as scores comparison before and after the treatment may help him or her and you as well to assess its overall success. Scales for anxiety can naturally also help in determining how serious a disorder is, what the focus of that certain anxiety is, and what are some of its symptoms and this way a more suitable treatment can be applied, or certain drugs can be prescribed.

Types of Scales for anxiety

Various types of anxiety scales are available to measure disorders in slightly different ways. Hamilton anxiety scale is the most popular and famous one . This scale lists 14 types of symptoms, all can be rated from 0 (not present at all) to 4 (that you suffer from it badly), with a total score ranging from 0 to 56, and if your rating  is above 18 it is usually assumed that you need treatment for anxiety disorder.

Symptoms listed are worries,anxious moods, certain fears (of animals, strangers or certain places), poor sleep, nausea, depression ,dizziness or trouble breathing for example. The Beck Anxiety Scale ,on the other hand,measures how much you have been troubled by worries recently. This scale lists 21 symptoms, and you have to rate each of them on a scale from 0 to 3, with an overall score of 63. If you have severe anxiety disorder, you will generally have a higher score.

Some symptoms listed are for example the sweating and fainting,feeling of loss of control. Another type of scale is the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, which consists of two scales. The state scale rates your present state of mind and current worries, the trait anxiety scale measures how anxious you generally feel. Sometimes doctors use only the trait scale to make a diagnosis of the certain anxiety disorder. There are in all 4 types of symptoms listed, you have to rate them from 1 to 4. The symptoms that are listed are for example low self-esteem, habitual worries, tension, feeling unmotivated.

There are various kinds of anxiety scales designed to measure the state of anxiety disorders as accurately as possible. These scales play an important role in the diagnosis and treatment of anxieties. Your health specialist will definitely be able to decide which one is the most suitable for you and then proceed with a suitable treatment.

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