Depression, Anxiety and Stress Test
How the Scales are Structured
Who Usually Takes This Test?
See How You Compare
Below is a preview of how scores are typically distributed across each scale.
Example Questions From the Test
- Never
- Rarely
- Often
- Almost always
- Never
- Rarely
- Often
- Almost always
- Never
- Rarely
- Often
- Almost always
Depression, Anxiety and Stress Test - Description and methodology of the test
Low mood, constant worry and tension that will not let go often arrive together, and from the inside they blur into one heavy feeling. This depression anxiety and stress test pulls them apart. You answer short statements about the past week and get one overall score from 0 to 100 first. People who search for an anxiety and depression test often find that stress is the missing third piece.
What the questionnaire measures
The DASS-21 test was developed by the Australian psychologists Peter and Sydney Lovibond to separate three states that people often confuse. It has seven statements for each part. The depression part looks at lost pleasure, low energy, an empty view of the days ahead and the feeling that you count for less than others. The anxiety part covers body alarm: a dry mouth, shaky hands, short breath, a pounding heart at rest and fear without a clear cause. The stress part looks at tension that does not switch off, trouble relaxing and a short fuse with small delays. Your answers to all three are added into the headline score, overall emotional distress, which is shown from 0 to 100 and opens your result.
How to take it and read the result
Each statement asks how often something was true over the past week, from never to almost always. Answer quickly and let the whole week decide rather than one unusual day. After the last answer you see:
- your overall emotional distress score from 0 to 100, shown first;
- a low, moderate or high level for depression, anxiety and stress;
- the situations from your answers that pushed each part up;
- a comparison with people from your country.
The three parts often rise together, yet one usually leads, and that tells you where to start. The full Depression Anxiety Stress Scales had 42 items; the short form keeps half of them and the same three parts, so it fits into a few minutes. Many people come back after a month to see whether their overall score has moved.
- Clark, L. A., & Watson, D. (1991). Tripartite model of anxiety and depression: Psychometric evidence and taxonomic implications. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 100(3), 316-336.
- Lovibond, P. F., & Lovibond, S. H. (1995). The structure of negative emotional states: Comparison of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS) with the Beck Depression and Anxiety Inventories. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 33(3), 335-343.
- Henry, J. D., & Crawford, J. R. (2005). The short-form version of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21): Construct validity and normative data in a large non-clinical sample. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 44(2), 227-239.
Updated: