Assessment of anxiety in long-term care: examination of the Geriatric Anxiety Inventory (GAI) and its short form

Abstract

Both the GAI and GAI-SF appear to be useful tools for assessing anxiety among nursing home residents with psychological disorders. The GAI-SF may be a viable replacement for the GAI as a screener for anxiety in long-term care.

Geriatric Anxiety Scale: Development and Preliminary Validation of a Long-Term Care Anxiety Assessment Measure

“…Specifically, the GAI demonstrated excellent internal consistency. This is consistent with previous research on the GAI (Gerolimatos et al, 2013) which found that the GAI was a reliable and valid measurement of anxiety in nursing homes. The GAI had significantly better internal consistency when compared to the GAS-LTC.…”

“…The items are rated "agree" or "disagree" with higher scores indicating higher levels of anxiety. The properties of the GAI have been examined with community-dwelling older adults (Pachana et al, 2007;Byrne et al, 2010), older adults seeking outpatient clinical services (Pachana et al, 2007), and older adults in long-term care settings (Gerolimatos et al, 2013). A cut-off score of 10 shows specificity of 84% and sensitivity of 75% for detecting Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), and a cut-off score of 8 was used for the detection of any anxiety disorder with a specificity of 80% and sensitivity of 78%.…”

The prevalence of anxiety among older adults in nursing homes and other residential aged care facilities: a systematic review

“…Despite anxiety being one of the most common psychiatric conditions in later life (Gonçalves et al, 2011), only recently has interest gained momentum into anxiety among residents of aged care facilities (known variously as nursing homes, hostels, assisted living facilities, or long-term care/residential homes). This is surprising, particularly given that psychiatric disorders commonly precipitate admission into residential care (Luppa et al, 2010), and older residents represent an increasingly frail and medically ill group who are at increased risk for anxiety (Tolin et al, 2005;Gerolimatos et al, 2013).…”

Validez factorial de la versión española del Inventario de Ansiedad Geriátrica (GAI): Análisis empírico de su estructura y dimensiones

“…Several researches have studied the psychometric properties of the GAI, including MárquezGonzález, Losada, FernándezFernández, & Pachana (2012), Gerolimatos, Gregg, & Edelstein (2013), Massena, Bom de Araújo, Pachana, & Camozzato de Pádua (2014), Yan, Xin, Wang, & Tang (2014), Gould, Segal, Yochim, Pachana, Byrne & Beaudreau (2014), Ball, Lipsius, & Escobar (2015), and Guan (2016). In general, they found that the GAI presents good psychometric properties such as internal consistency indexes (Cronbach's α) ranging from 0.91 to 0.93 among healthy communitydwelling older adults and in the psychogeriatric sample, respec tively.…”