The GAD-7 is the primary care companion to the PHQ-9, serving as the standard, rapid screening tool for clinical anxiety.
Quantifying Anxiety
Anxiety is a normal human emotion, but Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is a pathological state of constant, uncontrollable worry that physically and mentally exhausts the patient. The GAD-7 asks patients how often they have been bothered by specific symptoms over the last two weeks, scoring from 0 (Not at all) to 3 (Nearly every day).
The Questions
The survey asks if the patient has been:
- Feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge.
- Not being able to stop or control worrying.
- Worrying too much about different things.
- Trouble relaxing.
- Being so restless that it is hard to sit still.
- Becoming easily annoyed or irritable.
- Feeling afraid, as if something awful might happen.
Sum of scores (0-3) across 7 questions over the past 2 weeks.
Because depression and anxiety share massive physiological overlap (and often occur together), primary care physicians typically administer the PHQ-9 and GAD-7 simultaneously.