Anxiety and Related Disorders Comprehensive nursing paper example

Anxiety and Related Disorders Comprehensive nursing paper example

Instrument: Depression Anxiety Stress Scales

Article: The depression, anxiety and stress scale (DASS-21) as a screener for depression in substance use disorder inpatients: a pilot study. (Anxiety and Related Disorders Comprehensive nursing paper example)

Appropriateness for Dx 

DASS comprises a set of three self-report scales that seek to measure a client’s negative emotional states of depression, anxiety and stress. Its construction is meant to measure defined emotional states and advance a researcher’s or scientist-professional clinicians on defining, understanding, and measuring key emotional states that fall in the range of depression, anxiety, and stress(Beaufort et al., 2017). This study sought to examine the predictive validity of DASS-21 for the presence of a depressive disorder among patients diagnosed with substance abuse disorder based on the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4th Edition) and the ICD -10( International Classification of Diseases 10th Edition.(Anxiety and Related Disorders Comprehensive nursing paper example)

Response to Therapy/Treatment

 The DASS-21 is appropriate for screening the presence of a depressive disorder among SUD clients. Campos et al. (2015) note that anxiety and pain intensity increases the hypersensitivity to experimental pain stimuli while depression tends to lower it. (Anxiety and Related Disorders Comprehensive nursing paper example)

Psychometrics 

Each of the DASS components has 14 items subdivided into subscales of 2-5items with similar components. The Depression scale assesses factors like hopelessness, devaluation of life, inertia, anhedonia, and dysphoria and self- deprecation. The anxiety scale assesses the subjective experience of anxiety affect, situational anxiety, skeletal muscle impact and autonomic arousal. The stress scale is designed to focus on levels of long-term non-specific arousal. It assesses an individual’s challenges in relaxing, nervous arousal and being provoked to anger very easily. Participants are asked to use a 4 –point severity or frequency to rate the magnitude to which they encountered each of the three effects over the past seven days. Scores for DASS are then computed by adding up all the scores for specific items.(Anxiety and Related Disorders Comprehensive nursing paper example)

Limitations 

The tool has limitations like relying heavily on the client’s self-report, who may sometimes forget or rate their experience appropriately. This may be more serious if the provider decides to use the shorter version of DASS-21 that has seven items only.(Anxiety and Related Disorders Comprehensive nursing paper example)