It’s the first time the task force has made a recommendation for anxiety screening in adults.
A top group of medical experts has recommended that most adults get screened for anxiety. We’ve got more details on this groundbreaking guidance and how it may change your next checkup.
What are the new anxiety recommendations?
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is now recommending that adults ages 19 to 64 get screened for anxiety. If this news seems familiar, it’s because in September 2022, the group released a draft of the proposed guidelines, and put them up for public comment. Now, the final recommendation has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association — and it’s the first time the task force has recommended routine anxiety screening in adults. The guidelines also specifically mention pregnant and postpartum women, as previous studies have shown that stress and mental health issues among pregnant people have tripled since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The guidance is intended to help primary care clinicians catch anxiety disorders early, to get patients the help they need. And although it doesn’t compel doctors to follow the advice, it may influence insurance companies’ coverage of the condition.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, an estimated 31 percent of American adults have experienced an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives, but too often it goes undetected. One study found that most people wait years before initiating treatment, even though therapy, drugs, or a combination of the two has been shown to significantly improve anxiety symptoms.
The stress and uncertainty of the pandemic also fueled a 25 percent increase in anxiety and depression in the first year that Covid-19 started spreading globally, and a May 2023 Gallup poll found that a whopping 29 percent of American adults reported having been clinically diagnosed with depression at some point in their lives.
How does anxiety screening work?
Mental health screening commonly occurs at routine checkups. Patients are asked to fill out questionnaires designed to identify those at risk, who might not appear to be struggling with anxiety. One test is called the General Anxiety Disorder-7, which asks patients to rate how often in the last two weeks they report “feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge,” or how commonly they feel “afraid as if something awful might happen” on a scale ranging from “not at all” to “nearly every day.”
Going over the results can help patients open up with their doctors, who can then connect them with a mental health professional.
Why are people 65 and older being excluded?
The task force concluded that the screening tools typically used to identify an anxiety disorder weren’t sensitive enough to work on older adults. That’s because many of the common symptoms of anxiety — like trouble sleeping, pain, and fatigue — are also common complaints of aging.
“You could be flagging a lot of older adults for having an anxiety disorder when they don’t,” Dr. Lori Pbert, a task force member and UMass Chan Medical School professor, told the Wall Street Journal last fall.
In April, however, the task force recommended that children ages 8 to 18 be screened for anxiety.
How is it being received?
Some healthcare workers have questioned how effective anxiety screenings would really be. There’s already a shortage of mental health professionals. Dr. Wanda Nicholson, vice chair of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, told NBC, “We recognize that there can be limitations in terms of access to mental health providers within the health care system,” but still calls the guidelines a “call to action.”
“Screening for anxiety disorders in the general adult population can lead to identifying these conditions early and then, if those people who are identified get linked up with appropriate care, they will benefit,” Dr. Michael Silverstein, vice chair of the USPSTF and director of the Hassenfeld Child Health Innovation Institute at Brown University, told CNN.
Others say it’s progress in tackling America’s mental health problem. “This is a really important step forward,” Arthur C. Evans, chief executive at the American Psychological Association, told the Wall Street Journal last year. “Screening for mental health conditions is critical to our ability to help people at the earliest possible moment.”
