In line with draft recommendations, the task force for the first time has endorsed screening for anxiety disorders in all adults younger than age 65 without recognized signs or symptoms of anxiety.
This “B” recommendation reflects “moderate certainty” evidence that screening for anxiety in this population has a moderate net benefit. There currently is not enough evidence to recommend for or against screening for anxiety disorders in adults 65 and older, the task force said.
The USPSTF final recommendation statements and corresponding evidence summaries were published online in the Journal of the American Medical Association, as well as on the task force website.
Jury out on screening for suicide risk
The task force continues to recommend screening all adults for depression. This “B” recommendation reflects moderate-certainty evidence that screening for major depression in adults has a moderate net benefit.
However, there is not enough evidence to recommend for or against screening for suicide risk in all adults. Therefore, the task issued an “I” statement, indicating that the balance of benefits and harms cannot be determined at present.
“We are urgently calling for more research to determine the effectiveness of screening all adults for suicide risk and screening adults 65 and older for anxiety disorders,” task force member Gbenga Ogedegbe, MD, MPH, founding director of the Institute for Excellence in Health Equity at NYU Langone Health, New York, said in a statement.
The authors of an accompanying editorial noted that a positive screen result for anxiety “should be immediately followed with clinical evaluation for suicidality”.
Murray Stein, MD, MPH, and Linda Hill, MD, MPH, both with University of California, San Diego, also noted that a positive screen for anxiety could be indicative of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and clinicians should “be prepared to follow up with requisite questions about traumatic experiences that will be needed to home in on a diagnosis of PTSD that may require additional follow-up, referral, or both.
“Anxiety disorders can be distressing and disabling, and appropriate recognition and treatment can be life-altering and, in some cases, lifesaving, for patients,” Dr. Stein and Dr. Hill pointed out.
Effective, evidence-based psychological and pharmacologic treatments for anxiety disorders are available, they added. But the recommendation to routinely screen for anxiety disorder “must be accompanied by the recognition that there are too few mental health specialists available to manage the care of all patients with anxiety disorders, and even fewer who provide services for low-income and non-English-speaking populations,” they wrote.
This research report received no commercial funding. Disclosures for task force members and editorial writers are listed with the original articles.
A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.