[Preliminary construction and validation of an anxiety scale derived from the French version of the AMDP, the AMDP-AT].

The authors have applied to 493 Belgian and French patients the French version of the AMDP Psychopathology and Somatic scales, made of 140 items from the original German version and of 22 items specific to its French adaptation, among others anxiety items. By applying a principal components factor analysis to this sample, a 17-items. Anxiety Scale was extracted from the 162-items complete scales. This new scale is characterized by a predominence of tension/irritability items over somatic items as compared to the Hamilton Anxiety Scale. On 116 cases, the correlation between both scales is .59 (p less than .0001). A cut-off score for anxiety and an inclusion score for drug trials are suggested on the basis of statistical data.