Introducing Your Mood Trends
Are you satisfied with your life? Feeling anxious from time to time? We got you covered with our latest release - meet our new Wellbeing reports feature. Wellbeing reports contain standardized scientific questionnaires to help you understand when you should seek help to prevent mental health problems.
By answering a few questions about your life, you can better understand the current state of your mental wellbeing and monitor it as time goes by. Ideally, it’s recommended to check on your emotional state of well-being as often as your physical health, so that warning signs can be identified and more serious issues don’t have a chance to become ingrained.
With this release, we introduce you to two questionnaires, which are the Generalized anxiety disorder questionnaire (GAD-7) and The Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS). Feel free to explore the science behind the tests below and test it out in the app.
GAD-7 test or a generalized anxiety disorder assessment
Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7 (GAD-7) is a self-reported questionnaire for screening and severity measuring of a generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). GAD-7 has seven items, which measure the severity of various signs of GAD according to reported response categories with assigned points. Assessment is indicated by the total score, which is made up by adding together the scores for the scale of all seven items.
GAD-7 is a sensitive self-administered test to assess generalized anxiety disorder, normally used in outpatient and primary care settings for referral to a psychiatrist, pending the outcome. The normative data enables users of the GAD-7 to discern whether an individual’s anxiety score is normal or mildly, moderately, or severely elevated. However, it cannot be used as a replacement for clinical assessment and additional evaluation should be used to confirm a diagnosis of GAD.
Initially validated in 2149 patients as a diagnostic tool for GAD (cutoff score 10-> sensitivity 89%, specificity 82%, test-retest reliability with ICC=0.83), the GAD-7 was later found to have reasonable sensitivity, specificity as a screener for panic disorder, social phobia and PTSD (cutoff score 8- sensitivity 77%, specificity 82%; cutoff score 10 - sensitivity 68% and specificity 88% [for any anxiety disorder](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17339617/)). For Panic Disorder, Social Phobia, & PTSD, a cutoff score of 8 may be used for optimal sensitivity/specificity.
The Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS)
The Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) was developed to assess satisfaction with the respondent's life as a whole. The scale does not assess satisfaction with life domains such as health or finances but allows subjects to integrate and weigh these domains in whatever way they choose.
Normative data are presented for the scale, Self Report Measures for Love and Compassion Research: Satisfaction which shows good convergent validity with other scales and with other types of assessments of subjective well-being. Life satisfaction as assessed by the SWLS shows a degree of temporal stability (e.g., .54 for 4 years), yet the SWLS has shown sufficient sensitivity to be potentially valuable to detect a change in life satisfaction during the course of clinical intervention. Furthermore, the scale shows discriminant validity from emotional well-being measures.
The SWLS is recommended as a complement to scales that focus on psychopathology or emotional well-being, as it assesses an individuals' conscious evaluative judgment of his or her life by using the person's own criteria.
Whenever you've noticed some signs of possible mental health issues, remember that you could benefit from professional help, such as talking to your general practitioner, a psychotherapist, or a psychiatrist in your area. You can also call a crisis helpline whenever you need immediate support and relief from your symptoms.
There is no shame in seeking help for mental health problems - it is one of the best ways to take care of your wellbeing and to prevent more serious problems from developing.
Is this the time for your mental health check-up? Explore our Wellbeing reports and get more insights on your mental health already today.