Do you sometimes find yourself panicking and feeling like you’re having a heart attack? Do you avoid certain things, places, or events because you get anxious when you must face them? You may be experiencing an anxiety or panic attack. The Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale looks at your symptoms and tells you just how severe they are.
One of the staples in determining the severity of a patients’ anxiety is the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale. This is a 14 point questionnaire that breaks down all of the possible symptoms of anxiety to decide exactly how severe the patients’ case is. While the first 13 questions are basically an interview conducted by the therapist, the last question is based on their perception of how the patient is doing.
The questionnaire itself is meant to rate the severity of symptoms such as mood, tension, physical symptoms and fears. The doctor will interview the patient and record the answers on the test and give them a rating from 0-4. Upon completion of the test, the results are added up and based on the total, the physician will have a general idea of how severe the case of anxiety is for this patient.
If the patient scores a 17 or less, their anxiety is deemed to be mild. As with the Beck model though, this depends on the honesty of the patient when describing their symptoms. You will at times find a patient that may be ashamed of their anxiety and will try to hide how they are actually feeling. A skilled therapist should be able to spot this and coax the true feelings out of their patient. If the patient scores in the 18-24 range, they are deemed to have a mild to moderate case and they should be able to overcome their anxiety on their own or with some assistance from a therapist. Learning breathing techniques and how to adjust your mentality in certain situation will help to reduce anxiety for a patient at this level. If a patient scores from 25-50, they are suffering from severe anxiety and will need assistance in overcoming their anxiety.
The test itself seems very simple, you can actually get a sample of it at
www.cnsforum.com/streamfile.aspx?filename=HAM_A.pdf&path=pdf As with any type of evaluation, the skill of the interviewer is critical. You can see by the questions that they are not only based on an answer from the patient, but their also has to be some intuition on the part of the interviewer to correctly interpret their answers. However simple this test may appear, it consistently delivers accurate results in testing for anxiety. It has stood the test of time and will continue to be used by healthcare professionals in the evaluation and treatment of anxiety disorders.
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