A Guide to Anxiety Scales
At times of heightened anxiety, you may feel lost and helpless, in these cases it is quite important too seek out a doctor, and to have an exact diagnosis of your problem. Many anxiety scales exist, designed to measure the severity of certain anxiety disorders. You can find simplified versions of many anxiety scales on the internet, so you can test yourself, just to check, before you see your doctor, who will in most of the cases measure and determine the severity of your anxiety partly by using anxiety scales.
He may also measure your anxiety after the treatment, as comparing your scores before and after the treatment may help him or her and you as well to assess its overall success. Anxiety scales 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 Anxiety Scales
There are various types of anxiety scales to measure disorders in slightly different ways. The most popular and famous one is perhaps the Hamilton Anxiety Scale. The 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, it is usually assumed that you need treatment for your anxiety disorder if you score more than 18.
Symptoms listed are anxious moods, worries, certain fears (of animals, strangers or certain places), poor sleep, dizziness, nausea, depression or trouble breathing for example. The Beck Anxiety Scale measures how much you have been troubled by worries recently. It 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 your anxiety disorder is severe, you will generally have a higher score.
Some symptoms listed are for example the feeling of loss of control, sweating or fainting. Another kind of scale is the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, which consists of two scales. The state scale measures your present state of mind and current worries, the trait anxiety scale measures how anxious you generally feel. Doctors sometimes use only the trait scale to make a diagnosis of the certain anxiety disorder. There are altogether 4 types of symptoms listed, you have to rate them from 1 to 4. Symptoms listed are for example low self-esteem, habitual worries, tension, feeling unmotivated.
Altogether, there are various kinds of anxiety scales designed to measure the state of anxiety disorders as accurately as possible, they play an important role in the diagnosis and treatment of anxieties. Your doctor will definitely be able to decide which one is the most suitable for you and then proceed with a suitable treatment
