Self-Rating Anxiety Scale

A commonly used scale for self-assessing anxiety is the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7 (GAD-7) scale. It’s a brief, widely recognized tool designed to assess the severity of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) symptoms.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7 (GAD-7) can help increase self-awareness and encourage individuals to seek support if they notice significant anxiety symptoms.

  • Quick and Easy: It’s short, taking just a few minutes to complete, making it accessible for self-assessment.

  • Commonly Used: It’s a widely accepted tool, often used by clinicians to assess the severity of anxiety in their patients.

  • Helps Monitor Anxiety: The GAD-7 can track changes in anxiety symptoms over time, helping individuals and healthcare providers gauge progress.

  • Non-diagnostic: It’s not meant to diagnose but can guide whether further professional evaluation or treatment is necessary.

The GAD-7 consists of 7 questions, with respondents rating how often they’ve experienced each symptom in the past two weeks. The possible responses are:

  • Not at all (0 points)

  • Several days (1 point)

  • More than half the days (2 points)

  • Nearly every day (3 points)

The 7 questions are:

  1. Feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge

  2. Not being able to stop or control worrying

  3. Worrying too much about different things

  4. Trouble relaxing

  5. Being so restless that it’s hard to sit still

  6. Becoming easily annoyed or irritable

  7. Feeling afraid as if something awful might happen

Scoring:

Add up the points for each of the 7 items:

  • 0–4: Minimal anxiety

  • 5–9: Mild anxiety

  • 10–14: Moderate anxiety

  • 15–21: Severe anxiety