USPSTF Updates Depression, Suicide, Anxiety Screening Recommendations

Earlier this week, the United States Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) updated its screening recommendations for . The suggestions may guide mental health professionals, endorse early diagnosis, and improve the mental health treatment pipeline.

The updated guidelines for anxiety recommend that anyone under 65 is screened for an anxiety disorder. The researchers also suggest that pregnant and postpartum individuals are screened for anxiety and related disorders.

These updates follow previous suggestions on pediatric anxiety screenings, which suggested that all adolescents between 8 and 18 get screened for anxiety.

The statement by USPSTF notes, “To achieve the benefit of screening for anxiety disorders and reduce disparities in anxiety disorder-associated morbidity, it is important that persons who screen positive are evaluated further for diagnosis and, if appropriate, are provided or referred for evidence-based care.”

The recommendation notes that the organization is moderately certain that these guidelines provide a moderate net benefit for adults, pregnant, and postpartum individuals; however, there is insufficient evidence to support screenings in older adults.

To summarize, anxiety guidelines recommend screenings for anyone between 8 and 64, pregnant people, and postpartum individuals with moderate benefits. There is insufficient data to support screenings for children under 8 or adults over 64.

The same day, the USPSTF updated its recommendations on depression and suicide risk screenings for adults. The guidelines recommend that all adults, pregnant individuals, postpartum patients, and older adults over 64 get screened for depression. The USPSTF is moderately confident that these screenings will yield moderate benefits.

Despite recommendations for depression screening, the USPSTF could not gather sufficient evidence to support suicide risk screenings for these patient populations.

Even with these suggestions, the USPSTF highlights multiple research gaps and areas of need, including suicide risk epidemiology, the potential harms of suicide risk interventions, targeted vs general screening for suicide risk, the accuracy of anxiety tools in older adults, and the prevalence of these disorders.