Newsletter
Anxiety2023-03-05
“Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.”
—Arthur Somers Roche
We live in an era where anxiety seems on the rise, in all age groups, but particularly in the young. Whether it is the fear of potential harm, anger at perceived unfairness, uncertainty about the future due to the rapid pace of change, one or more of these are experienced on most days by most people.
We have developed an instrument that measures these feelings, the 4-item Simplified Anxiety Scale (SAS-4), that is now available in our Life x Mind app. It correlates well with existing more complex clinical instruments, while being more temporally defined, more precisely quantitative, and a better fit to the neurobiology of anxiety. Like McKinsey like to say, it is composed of items that are MECE: mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.
We have used the SAS-4 to develop blood biomarkers for anxiety, that help with objective assessment, risk stratification, matching in a personalized way to non-addictive medications (and nutraceuticals), monitoring of response to treatment, and preventive annual screening. Stay tuned in the coming week for a major publication describing this work.
We hope that by bringing precision health approaches to anxiety, we can help improve people’s lives!
Live. Happier. Longer.