Palliative Measurement of Anxiety in Young Women With Gynecologic Malignancy: A Review of Three Instruments

Palliative care involvement is common among patients with gynecologic cancers related to delayed diagnosis and symptom burden. Physical symptoms such as pain, nausea, and weakness can be managed with analgesics, antiemetics, nutrition, and physical therapy. Psychiatric side effects like anxiety disorders, however, are harder to capture. Associations among palliative care, anxiety assessment, and intervention in this population are not well studied. This could be related to lack of psychiatric-specific education in medical, nursing, and continuing palliative education programs. Palliative guidelines suggest systematically addressing psychiatric aspects of care in each patient encounter. Prior to intervention, providers must first properly assess anxiety. In this paper, development and validity of three instruments designed to measure clinical anxiety will be reviewed, including National Comprehensive Cancer Network Distress Thermometer, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory Form Y1, and Beck Anxiety Inventory. Conclusions will be drawn regarding reliability and validity of each tool, and recommendations will be made based on respective psychometric properties.