Anxiety Test

What this measures, and what it does not

This is a screening questionnaire about anxiety. It is not a diagnostic instrument, it cannot tell you whether you have an anxiety disorder, and a high score here is not a diagnosis. Only a qualified clinician can make that assessment.

What it can do is describe five dimensions separately, which matters more here than on most screens, because anxiety is not one thing. Somebody who worries constantly but does everything anyway has a different problem from somebody whose worry is manageable but whose life has quietly narrowed, and a single number would treat them identically.

The difference between an anxious disposition and an anxiety difficulty is rarely how much you worry. It is whether the worry is controllable, and whether you are avoiding things because of it.

Why avoidance is the scale to watch

The most useful thing on this page, and the least intuitive.

Avoiding something that makes you anxious works. The relief is immediate and genuine, which is exactly the problem: every avoidance is a small lesson to yourself that the thing was dangerous and that avoiding it was what kept you safe. The next encounter is therefore harder, and the range of acceptable situations narrows by a degree.

Nobody decides to have a smaller life. It assembles from a long series of individually reasonable decisions to not do a specific thing on a specific day.

This also explains why the standard treatments work the way they do. Graded exposure — approaching the avoided thing in manageable steps, with support — is not about toughening up. It is about running the mechanism in reverse, and it has one of the strongest evidence bases of any psychological intervention.

Get the physical causes ruled out

Worth stating separately, because it is cheap and frequently skipped.

An overactive thyroid produces a picture that looks convincingly like anxiety: racing heart, tension, sleep disruption, restlessness, being easily startled. So can certain medications, caffeine at volume, and some vitamin deficiencies.

If your physical tension scale is high, ask for a blood test. Not instead of anything else — alongside. It rules in or out a whole category of explanation that no questionnaire can reach.

About the items

The five facets follow the dimensions the validated screening instruments measure. The statements are written for this test rather than reproduced from a copyrighted scale, so this questionnaire is not equivalent to a clinical screen and should not be reported as one.

The free run takes the first five statements of each facet, giving you a real reading on all five rather than a precise reading on two.

If your scores are high

Anxiety disorders are among the most treatable conditions in mental health. Cognitive behavioural therapy has a large and consistent evidence base, medication works well for many people, and the two together work better than either alone for a substantial number.

The most common mistake is waiting for it to be bad enough. There is no threshold you have to reach first, and the earlier avoidance is interrupted the less there is to undo.

If you are in crisis, please contact your local emergency services or a crisis line rather than a website.