Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS)

The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) is a valid and reliable self-rating scale that measures anxiety and depression in both hospital and community settings. HADS gives clinically meaningful results as a psychological screening tool and can assess the symptom severity and caseness of anxiety disorders and depression in patients with illness and the general population. HADS is now only available in a paper format. The digital version is no longer available.

Fully standardised, HADS can detect the presence and severity of mild degrees of mood disorder, anxiety and depression using one brief questionnaire.

Test details

• One questionnaire, comprising fourteen questions
• The questionnaire features seven questions for anxiety and seven for depression of which can be answered within 2 – 5 minutes.
• Individual assessment
• Suitable for administration by a range of clinical professionals along with researchers assessing emotional disorders in adults

Why use HADS?

• HADS facilitates the early identification of both anxiety and depression simultaneously, whilst giving a separate score for each – helping aid the referral to appropriate services
• Easy to score and simple to interpret, HADS provides clear cut-off scores to indicate the severity of the disorder to help inform appropriate interventions
• It is ideal for use as a screening measure, and index of clinical change, an outcome measure and for research purposes
• Highly cost effective – as a single measure of anxiety and depression it removes the need for separate measures and is suitable for all ages from 17+