Concurrent validity of the Geriatric Anxiety Inventory in late-life depression

Extract

The Geriatric Anxiety Inventory (GAI) is a newly developed instrument specifically designed to measure common symptoms of anxiety in older adults Pachana et al., 2006). It contains 20 items with a dichotomous response format “agree/disagree”. The GAI can be self-rating or administered by a trained health professional. Pachana et al. reported the GAI to have sound psychometric properties in both normal older people and in a sample of geriatric psychiatry patients. The geriatric psychiatry patients consisted of 46 older people attending a community geriatric psychiatric service and were free of clinically significant cognitive impairment. In this sample, a cut-off point of 8/9 (out of 20) has a sensitivity of 73% and a specificity of 80% in identifying patients with an anxiety disorder. The GAI, however, was not designed to diagnose specific anxiety disorders but to assess the severity of anxiety symptoms across a range of presentations in older adults.