anxiety test
Seven questions about the last two weeks. Two minutes or so, scored right here in your browser: nothing is sent anywhere and nothing is stored.
This is the GAD-7, the scale clinicians use for a quick read on how much anxiety is costing someone. It doesn’t diagnose. It does tell you whether to take this to a doctor, and what to tell them.
scored in your browser · answers go nowhere
0 of 7 answered — the result appears on its own once everything is answered
your result
0 of 21
about this questionnaire
The GAD-7 was built in 2006 so that a clinician could tell in a minute whether anxiety was worth pursuing. Seven items, zero to three each, a total from zero to twenty-one.
Ten is the mark that usually prompts a closer look for generalised anxiety disorder. What follows is a proper conversation: the scale doesn’t diagnose and can’t, it only points.
What it can’t do. It doesn’t separate anxiety from whatever is causing it — a high score turns up with thyroid problems, with burnout, after a month without sleep. It misses panic when attacks are infrequent. And it measures exactly two weeks: if the bad stretch was six months ago, the scale won’t see it.
short answers
- Is the test accurate?
- As a screen, yes — that’s what it was built for. As a diagnosis, no, and it doesn’t claim to be. It shows how much anxiety cost you over two weeks; where it came from and what to do about it is worked out by a person.
- Do my answers go anywhere?
- No. Everything is scored in your browser: neither your answers nor the result reach a server, we don’t ask for an email, and the result disappears with the tab. Like any site, we run web analytics; what it collects is set out in the privacy policy.
- Can I retake it?
- Yes, and it makes sense to — every two to four weeks. The trend says more than a single number: which way it’s moving matters more than today’s total.
- My score is high. Does that mean I have an anxiety disorder?
- Not necessarily. Lost sleep, thyroid trouble, an alcohol rebound, some medications and simply a brutal month all produce a similar picture. Which is exactly why nobody diagnoses from a total.
read next
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what we read
- Spitzer R. L., Kroenke K., Williams J. B. W., Löwe B. A brief measure for assessing generalized anxiety disorder: the GAD-7. Archives of Internal Medicine, 2006;166(10):1092–7 — the original scale and cut-offs. pubmed
- Plummer F. et al. Screening for anxiety disorders with the GAD-7 and GAD-2: a systematic review and diagnostic metaanalysis. General Hospital Psychiatry, 2016;39:24–31 — how the scale performs in practice. pubmed
On this scale things are quiet. That doesn’t mean you’ve had no hard days — it means anxiety hasn’t owned the last two weeks.
If you came looking for this test anyway, there was probably a reason. Anxiety can sit in one place — before a talk, on a plane, at three in the morning — and barely move a general scale. Then the thing to look at is that place, not the total.
Anxiety is there and you can feel it, but it isn’t taking over yet. In this range what helps is usually what you can start today, and regularity beats intensity.
Five minutes of slow breathing daily gives more than half an hour once a week. Add sleep, movement and less coffee after midday — dull advice, and it works.
If nothing has shifted in a month, or the number has gone up, that’s reason enough to see someone before it gets heavy.
Ten is the mark where an anxiety disorder usually starts being considered and looked into. Not a diagnosis — a signal that there isn’t much room left to handle this alone.
What actually helps here is cognitive behavioural therapy; the evidence for it in anxiety disorders is the strongest there is. Talking to a doctor or a therapist is about getting a tool, not about being declared unwell.
Breathing stays useful in this range — something for every day, not the fix.
That’s a high score, and people who get it have usually been having a hard time for months. If that’s you, you’ve held on a long while, and that isn’t nothing.
Here’s the honest part: in this range a website and an app don’t solve much. You need a person — a therapist or a psychiatrist. Anxiety disorders are treatable and the methods are well worked out; for a lot of people that road turns out much shorter than years of managing alone.
What you can do today, while the rest is only starting: breathe with a long exhale and go to bed. It isn’t much. It isn’t nothing either.