Assessment of Anxiety with Hispanics

Abstract

This chapter presents a review of assessment measure for generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, specific phobias, and posttraumatic stress disorder as they relate to both English and Spanish-speaking Hispanics. First, it is necessary to identify which measures: are most commonly used to assess anxiety in English-speaking populations and have good psychometric properties and then to specify their utility with Hispanics. Although many Hispanics identify Spanish as their primary language, the shortage of Spanish-speaking clinicians necessitates that reliable English measures be available for use with this population. Furthermore, because evidence shows that Hispanics often express mental health symptoms through somatization and experts suggest that this is an important cultural consideration when assessing anxiety disorders, this chapter also emphasize the importance of administering assessments that assess somatic symptoms of anxiety. Psychological assessment measures have been in routine clinical use for many decades; however, it is just within the last 10 years that measures have begun to be standardized for use in Hispanic populations. There are still a limited number of assessments that have been validated on Hispanic samples. This excludes several measures that have excellent psychometric properties and are widely used in clinical practice. That being said, there is significant debate in the field regarding whether it is ethical to reserve using a reliable and well-validated assessment and behavioral health interventions, for that matter measure simply because it has not been validated with the individual patient's cultural group. It is clear from the evidence reviewed below that although this population may be underrepresented in research, Hispanics have not been excluded. Therefore, it is the view of this author that measures should be utilized with Hispanics unless there is clear evidence or a theoretical reason not to. The goal of this chapter is to present the current best practices in anxiety assessment in a Hispanic population in order to ensure access to quality behavioral health care. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)