Assessment Scales in Depression And Anxiety

Much evidence supports the clinical importance of full symptom remission in the treatment of depression and anxiety disorders, given that residual symptoms are associated with poor outcomes including higher risk of relapse, chronicity, and suicide, and lower quality of life. Clinical practice guidelines now target remission as a primary objective for acute treatment. Because remission is usually defined as scores within the normal range on a symptom scale, the importance of using validated assessment scales to track outcome is becoming increasingly recognized as important for clinical care. Disease management programs to improve outcomes in depressive and anxiety disorders also enlist the use of outcome scales as aids for clinical decision-making. Because of these recent developments, there is increasing interest among clinicians in the use of validated assessment scales in their clinical practices. There are a number of books recently published on assessment scales for depression and anxiety. However, these books are generally more detailed than clinicians require, are specific to one or other condition, or involve specialty populations (children, geriatrics). Hence, there is still a need for a simple-to-use book that encompasses all of the major depression and anxiety assessment scales of interest to clinicians. To meet the needs of clinicians treating patients with depressive and anxiety disorders, this volume brings together empirically validated assessment scales. Such a volume will serve several purposes for clinicians: 1) to illustrate the assessment scales used in clinical trials and research studies; 2) to show how to select an assessment scale, and to decide which scale to use for a particular clinical situation; and 3) to provide sample assessment scales to use in their clinical practice. In contrast to other available books dealing with assessment tools, this volume will be short, practical, and user-friendly. Given the importance of remission in the marketing campaigns of many pharmaceutical companies in these therapeutic areas, there will likely be great interest among the companies for such a book to use in CME campaigns. The book will be invaluable to psychiatrists, family physicians, other primary care physicians, psychologists, nurses, social workers, as well as to graduate students in clinical psychology, medicine, and nursing.Lam, Raymond W. is the author of 'Assessment Scales in Depression And Anxiety ', published 2004 under ISBN 9781841844343 and ISBN 1841844349.