ABSTRACT
Dr. Finney provides with a charming historical review of the development of questionnaire measures of anxiety, laced as it is with personal anecdotes and references to his interactions with other major workers in this area. Measures that more effectively discriminate anxiety from depression also would represent a definite step forward. The behavioral and cognitive aspects of anxiety in patients also represent neglected areas of measurement. One might suspect that the apparent sensitivity of the Hamilton Anxiety Scale was due to clinical raters picking up sedative side effects in benzodiazepine-treated patients, rather than due to superior sensitivity to the specific antianxiety effects of the drug. The foregoing discussion has placed heavy emphasis on detection of the response to benzodiazepines as a criterion for validating measures of anxiety. This position clearly has heuristic value for investigators concerned with the psychopharmacology of anxiety.
