Anxiety Test GAD-7 — Free 7-Question Self-Screening

GAD-7 looks at anxiety over the past two weeks with 7 items. Some ask about worry itself: whether you can stop or control it, and whether you worry too much about many different things. The rest ask about tension in body and mind: feeling nervous or on edge, trouble relaxing, restlessness that makes it hard to sit still, becoming easily irritated, and fearing that something awful might happen. Each item is scored 0 to 3, so the total runs from 0 to 21.

You answer by how often, not how intensely, each problem bothered you. The four options are not at all, several days, 7 days or more, and nearly every day. Whatever the source of the anxiety, whether exams, work or health worries, simply recall on how many days it was actually there. It usually takes around two minutes, and answering with the whole two-week period in mind is more accurate than going by one particularly bad day.

Soundary shows your total in four bands: 0–4 minimal anxiety, 5–9 mild, 10–14 moderate and 15–21 severe. Even at the same score, what helps may differ depending on whether the worry-control items are high or whether bodily reactions such as tension, restlessness and irritability stand out. When worry items dominate, practising ways to handle anxious thoughts is often useful; when tension items dominate, sleep and relaxation are often a good first step. Check the items that came out high on the results screen.

GAD-7 was built with generalized anxiety disorder in mind, but scores can also rise because of other kinds of anxiety, such as panic or social anxiety. Physical factors such as caffeine, lack of sleep or thyroid problems can create similar tension as well. So the score is not a diagnosis but a screening result showing how much anxiety is taking up your daily life right now. If sudden surges of fear are the main issue, Panic Symptoms (SPC-9), and if tension in front of others is, Social Anxiety (SSAC) can make the picture clearer.

GAD-7 was published in 2006 by Spitzer, Kroenke, Williams and Löwe as a brief tool for assessing generalized anxiety disorder. It shares authors and a similar format with PHQ-9, the depression screener, so the two are often used side by side. Because it is short and easy to understand, it is widely used in primary care, counselling settings and research, and it has been translated into many languages. Soundary's version likewise asks about 7 symptoms over the past two weeks and scores them on the 0–21 range.

Anxiety rises and falls with circumstances, so retaking it every few weeks to see the trend works well. If you save your results on Soundary, your next attempt is shown side by side with the previous one. If your score keeps landing in the moderate range or above, or worry is keeping you awake and shaking your work and relationships, talk to a psychiatrist or counselor. Anxiety often improves with counselling and treatment, so you do not have to carry it alone.