[Spanish adaptation and validation of the anxiety scale of the French-language AMDP]

The Spanish translation of the 17-item Anxiety Scale extracted from the francophone extension of the AMDP scales, the AMDP-AT, has been filled out in 72 anxious, depressed and other psychiatric patients along with numerous other scales measuring global psychopathology (CGI, AMDP-SY), anxiety (VAS, Hamilton, Zung, Spielberger) and depression (VAS, Hamilton). The results point to a higher correlation with psychic anxiety than with somatic anxiety, and with state anxiety than with trait anxiety. The correlations are lower with depression scales than with anxiety scales but the mean scores in depressed vs. anxious patients do not differ significantly, which indicates that the AMDP-AT, like the HAMA, needs a preselection of anxious patients according to other criteria. The authors also report the results of correlations between AMDP-AT items and the total score, of a principal components analysis and of a stepwise regression.