![]() ![]() Thus, both clinicians and mental health practitioners need valid, reliable measures of anxious symptoms specifically tailored for this population and carefully developed to consider the clinical manifestations of late-life anxiety. Anxiety has also a substantial socio-economic burden, due to an increased use of health services among those who report greater symptoms. Moreover, anxious symptoms are often comorbid with other medical conditions and depressive disorders, worsening their prognosis and making the differential diagnosis difficult. Indeed, older adults typically report an increased sensitivity to several types of somatic stimuli and more physical complaints than younger adults, which could be mistaken for psychosomatic symptoms. ![]() A possible explanation lies on the specific characteristics of anxious symptoms in later life. ĭespite its impact and the high prevalence among the elderly population, anxiety remains often undiagnosed. By 2050 this percentage is expected to reach nearly 30% in most of the western countries. As of January 1st 2020, 13.9 million Italians (23.1% of the population) were over 65 years of age, and this percentage continues to increase annually. With an increasingly ageing population, the socio-economic costs of mental health problems – such as anxiety disorders – are growing significantly, especially in countries like Italy with low fertility rates and a high life expectancy. This prevalence is probably underestimated, considering that subsyndromal manifestations of anxious symptoms probably range from 15 to 52.3% in community-living older adults. In Europe, anxiety disorders are one of the most common mental health problems among elderly, with lifetime prevalence estimates ranging from 20.1% in Italy to 32.6% in England. The stable cut-off point provided could enhance the clinical usefulness of the GAS-10, which seems to be a promising valid and reliable tool for maximize diagnostic accuracy of geriatric anxiety symptoms. Using the ROC curve, the GAS-10 showed good discriminant validity in categorizing outpatients with GAD disorder, and high anxiety symptoms as measured by the GAS-SF cut-off. The GAS-10 may be more useful than the longer versions in many clinical and research applications, when time constraints or fatigue are issues. Differences in concurrent validity and diagnostic accuracy among the long form version of the GAS and the GAS-10 were not found significant. The GAS-10 displayed good internal construct validity, with unidimensional structure and no local dependency, good accuracy, and no signs of Differential Item Functioning (DIF) or measurement bias due to gender, but negligible due to the age. Concurrent validity, as well as diagnostic accuracy, was examined in a non-clinical sample ( N = 229 46.72% males) and clinical sample composed of 35 elderly outpatients (74.28% females) with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). In the present study, we explored the psychometric performance of the GAS-10 in the elderly through Item Response Theory in a sample of 1200 Italian community-dwelling middle-aged and elderly adults (53.8% males, mean age = 65.21 ± 9.19 years). However, its diagnostic accuracy is still unexplored, as well as its discriminative power in clinical samples. Among these, the 10-item Geriatric Anxiety Scale (GAS-10) showed strong psychometric properties in community-dwelling samples. Different brief assessment instruments have been developed as efficacy measures of geriatric anxiety in order to overcome psychometric weaknesses of its long form. Anxious symptoms have a negative impact on different aspects of the elderly’s quality of life, ranging from the adoption of unhealthy lifestyle behaviours to an increased functional impairment and a greater physical disability. ![]()
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