Symptoms of Generalized Anxiety Disorder Among Adults: United States, 2019.

Abstract

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is characterized by excessive worry that is difficult to control accompanied by physical symptoms including restlessness, being easily fatigued, difficulty concentrating, irritability, muscle tension, or sleep disturbance (1). The GAD-7 scale is a validated brief selfreport measure to screen for GAD and assess the severity of symptoms (2). Adults with GAD-7 scores of 0-4 are considered to have no or minimal symptoms of GAD, while those with scores of 5-9, 10-14, or 15-21 are considered to have mild, moderate, or severe symptoms, respectively (2). This report examines the percentage of adults aged 18 and over who experienced symptoms of anxiety in the past 2 weeks, by severity of symptoms and select demographic characteristics, using the GAD-7 scale.