Panic Self-Assessment
Explores experiences related to panic attacks, including how often they occur and how they affect your daily life.
What are panic attacks?
Panic attacks are sudden surges of intense fear that come on quickly and peak within minutes, often with a pounding heart, shortness of breath, dizziness, sweating, or feelings of unreality. They can feel terrifying, and many people start to worry about when the next one might come. This self-assessment helps you reflect on how panic has been affecting you over the past week.
What this assessment explores
Panic attacks are one of the most physically overwhelming experiences a person can have – and the fear of having another one can end up shaping your whole life in ways that creep up slowly. This assessment helps you understand how much panic is affecting you right now: not just the attacks themselves, but the anxiety around them and the ways you might be organising your life to avoid them. It's built on the PDSS, a brief and sensitive clinical measure of panic disorder severity.
See the original scaleWhat you can expect
There are 7 questions, and they'll ask you to reflect on your recent experiences with panic.
The questions touch on things like:
- How frequently panic attacks have been occurring
- How much distress you experience during them
- How much you worry about having another one
- Whether you've been avoiding situations or physical sensations that might trigger panic
- How much panic has been getting in the way of your work and social life
Your responses give you a clear picture of how severe your panic symptoms are right now – and which aspects are having the most impact.
Dr Joseph Phillips
Research Fellow
Why this is free and private
Insightable Mind is built by clinical and research psychologists to help people better understand themselves, while contributing to meaningful psychological research. These assessments are offered free as part of that work. Your responses are private – when data is used for research, it's fully anonymised and combined with others to help improve the assessments and answer important questions about human psychology.
Top tips
Our best advice to help you get the most out of your self-assessment:
