Glossary

Term · Pregnancy: Mind and Life

Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7

Also: GAD-7 questionnaire, GAD scale

Another name for the GAD-7, a seven-question anxiety screen. Scores of 10 or more usually prompt a closer look. See GAD-7.

In plain words

Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 is the full name of the questionnaire. It was built to screen for generalized anxiety disorder, a condition of ongoing worry that is hard to control. The scale asks seven questions about the past two weeks. Each answer is scored from 0 to 3. A total of 10 or more usually calls for a closer look. Clinics use the scale in pregnancy and after birth, often next to a depression screen. It is a screening tool. It cannot make a diagnosis by itself, and a clinician needs to talk with the person before deciding anything. A high score tells a clinician to ask more questions. A mother can ask what her score means and what the next steps are.

The deeper version

The GAD-7 is a seven-item self-report screen developed by Spitzer and colleagues (Archives of Internal Medicine, 2006) for generalized anxiety disorder. Its items map onto the core worry and associated symptoms of the diagnostic criteria. A total of 10 or more is the commonly used threshold for further evaluation, and it is the threshold ACOG Clinical Practice Guideline No. 4 (2023) cites for perinatal screening. The , the depression instrument often used alongside it, uses the same 10-point cut-off (Kroenke and colleagues, 2001). Screens of this kind have good negative predictive value but limited where prevalence is low. Perinatal studies vary in the thresholds they find optimal. The clinical question is how to separate anxious symptoms that reflect a disorder from those of pregnancy, newborn care, and major life events.

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Sources

  • Spitzer RL and colleagues — A brief measure for assessing generalized anxiety disorder: the GAD-7. Archives of Internal Medicine, 2006
  • Kroenke K and colleagues — The PHQ-9: validity of a brief depression severity measure. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 2001

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