Is the beck anxiety inventory a good tool to assess the severity of anxiety? A primary care study in The Netherlands study of depression and anxiety (NESDA)

Abstract

BackgroundAppropriate management of anxiety disorders in primary care requires clinical assessment and monitoring of the severity of the anxiety. This study focuses on the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) as a severity indicator for anxiety in primary care patients with different anxiety disorders (social phobia, panic disorder with or without agoraphobia, agoraphobia or generalized anxiety disorder), depressive disorders or no disorder (controls).MethodsParticipants were 1601 primary care patients participating in the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (NESDA). Regression analyses were used to compare the mean BAI scores of the different diagnostic groups and to correct for age and gender.ResultsPatients with any anxiety disorder had a significantly higher mean score than the controls. A significantly higher score was found for patients with panic disorder and agoraphobia compared to patients with agoraphobia only or social phobia only. BAI scores in patients with an anxiety disorder with a co-morbid anxiety disorder and in patients with an anxiety disorder with a co-morbid depressive disorder were significantly higher than BAI scores in patients with an anxiety disorder alone or patients with a depressive disorder alone. Depressed and anxious patients did not differ significantly in their mean scores.ConclusionsThe results suggest that the BAI may be used as a severity indicator of anxiety in primary care patients with different anxiety disorders. However, because the instrument seems to reflect the severity of depression as well, it is not a suitable instrument to discriminate between anxiety and depression in a primary care population.

Mindfulness and Self-Compassion in Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Examining Predictors of Disability

“…Multiple regression analyses were performed using anxiety and self-compassion as predictors of disability in the GAD sample. The BAI was used as a measure of anxiety symptoms, as previous work has demonstrated that the BAI score reflects overall anxiety symptom severity [38–40]. Statistical significance was set at P = 0.05.…”

Effectiveness of Collaborative Stepped Care for Anxiety Disorders in Primary Care: A Pragmatic Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial

“…The BAI lists 21 symptoms, and the total score ranges from 0 to 63. The BAI has good psychometric properties [33] and is suitable for assessing the severity of anxiety in primary care patients with anxiety disorders [34]. The Overall Anxiety Severity and Impairment Scale (OASIS) [35] was used as a proxy for anxiety severity at baseline.…”

Identifying Panic Disorder Subtypes Using Factor Mixture Modeling

“…Also, the BAI was not originally designed to measure panic but rather anxiety in general. However, the literature shows that the scale is more closely aligned to PD than to any other anxiety disorder, with higher BAI scores in panic populations than in nonpanic anxiety populations, [38][39][40][41] while its items capture the DSM-criteria for PD best. Previous studies using DSM panic symptom criteria for statistical analysis were limited by their retrospective assessment of specific symptoms that only briefly occur during a panic attack (seconds to minutes) that may have gone largely unnoticed at the time of the attack because other symptoms were predominant.…”