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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Short Anxiety Screening Test - a brief instrument for detecting anxiety in the elderly | | Author(s) | Gary Sinoff, Liora Ore, David Zlotogorsky |
| Journal title | International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 14, no 12, December 1999 |
| Pages | pp 1062-1071 |
| Keywords | Anxiety ; Depression ; Screening ; Israel. |
| Annotation | The Short Anxiety Screening Test (SAST), an easily administered rating scale, was developed to standardise the detection of anxiety disorder in older people, even, and especially, in the presence of depression. The instrument also included somatic complaints, often the manifestation of anxiety in older people. In this Israeli study, the SAST was validated against a psychiatric evaluation of 150 medical inpatients and outpatients (90 females) aged 70 and over, attending a geriatric service. The initial validity of the SAST was tested in all the sample and subsequently in the sub-groups of depressed and non-depressed. By the psychiatrist's evaluation, 40.7% suffered from anxiety. Mean SAST scores in the presence and absence of anxiety were significantly different (25.3 and 20.1). The overall validity of the SAST was high (sensitivity 75.4%; specificity 78.7%). In the presence of depression, sensitivity was 83.3% and specificity 70.5%. The SAST was valid in detecting anxiety in older people, as well as in depressed patients. The study proved the usefulness of the SAST in a geriatric assessment programme. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-000203208 A |
| Classmark | ENP: ENR: 3V: 7H6 |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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