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Hamilton Rating Scale for Anxiety (HAM-A)

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Hamilton Rating Scale for Anxiety (HAM-A)

Hamilton Rating Scale for Anxiety (HAM-A; Hamilton, 1959). The HAM-A is a 14-item clinician-report measure assessing anxiety symptoms in adults. The HAM-A can be used as a screening tool and to monitor symptom changes over time (Maier, Buller, Philipp, & Heuser, 1988).  The HAM-A has been used in several studies with adolescents (e.g. Delbello et al., 2009), and is recommended for clinical use with adolescents (Greenhill, Pine, March, Birmaher, & Riddle, 1998), but does not include a separate adolescent version. Respondents are asked to rate items on a 5-point scale ranging from zero (“none”) to four (“grossly disabling”). Mainly used to measure the effectiveness of anxiolytic medications, the measure has a strong emphasis on somatic symptoms. There is often overlap between somatic side effects of medication and the emphasis on measurement of somatic symptoms of anxiety, causing insufficient internal validity (Maier et al., 1988). The HAM-A demonstrates adequate inter-rater reliability (r = .74; Maier et al., 1988). In addition, the HAM-A demonstrates concurrent validity with the Covi Anxiety Scale (Maier et al., 1988).  The measure is available online (http://www.outcometracker.org).

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