Start Here: Mental Health Assessments
Put words on what you feel, in just a few minutes.
Sometimes you know something is off, but you can’t name it. You feel everything more than the people around you. Your mood has been low for weeks. Worry won’t switch off. Your focus slips no matter how hard you try. Naming it is the first step to changing it.
Built on science, not guesswork
The Depression Test (PHQ-9) and the Anxiety Test (GAD-7) are the questionnaires doctors and therapists use around the world, including in the UK’s NHS. The Adult ADHD Self-Assessment starts with the World Health Organization’s screener, then follows the steps of a full assessment. The Highly Sensitive Person quiz follows nearly 30 years of research by psychologists Elaine and Arthur Aron.
Under each test, you’ll find who developed it, where it was published and what the research found.
How they help you
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See clearly: a score and what it means, instead of guessing
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Know when to reach out: whether your result is at the level where doctors suggest talking to a professional
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Have something concrete to share: a full report by email, with clear words and numbers for your doctor or therapist
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Take the first steps: simple, practical habits suited to your result
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Track your progress: take the test again in a few weeks and see what has changed
Your answers stay private. These are screening and reflection tools, not a diagnosis.
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Quiz : Highly Sensitive Person
Do you feel everything a little more?
Some people notice what others miss: a change in someone’s voice, a light that’s too bright, a mood in the room before anyone speaks. They feel beauty and stress more deeply, and they need more time to recover after a busy day. If that sounds like you, you may be a highly sensitive person. It’s an inborn trait, not a flaw to fix, and it comes with real gifts: insight, empathy and depth.
Many sensitive people spend years thinking something is wrong with them. Seeing the trait clearly changes that. This short quiz shows you how sensitive you are, and in which way, so you can protect your energy and live your sensitivity as a strength.
In about 3 minutes, you’ll discover:
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Whether you’re highly sensitive, moderately sensitive, or grounded
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Your sensitivity map across four sides: depth of processing, overstimulation, emotional depth and empathy, and sensory subtlety
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A simple practice for each side, sent with your full report by email
No right or wrong answers. Answer for how you usually are, not how you think you should be.
Psychologists Elaine and Arthur Aron first described the trait, sensory processing sensitivity, in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1997), along with the 27-item Highly Sensitive Person Scale. Brain-imaging work (Acevedo and colleagues, Brain and Behavior, 2014) found that highly sensitive people show stronger activity in brain areas linked to awareness and empathy. Later studies (Lionetti and colleagues, Translational Psychiatry, 2018) suggest people fall into low, medium and high sensitivity groups, with the high group closer to 30% than the 15 to 20% first estimated. Our 16 original questions follow Aron’s four sides of sensitivity. This quiz is a reflection tool, not the official HSP Scale, and not a diagnosis.
Quiz : Depression Test (PHQ-9)
How has your mood really been lately?
Depression doesn’t always look like sadness. It can look like losing interest in things you used to enjoy, sleeping badly, feeling tired all the time, finding it hard to concentrate, or being hard on yourself. Because it creeps in slowly, many people don’t recognise it until it’s weighing on everything.
The PHQ-9 is the questionnaire doctors use worldwide to check for depression. Its nine questions match the nine signs health professionals look for, and your answers about the last two weeks give you a clear, reliable score.
In about 3 minutes, you’ll discover:
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Your score from 0 to 27, and what it means: none to minimal, mild, moderate, moderately severe or severe
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Whether your score is at the level where doctors suggest talking to a health professional
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Small, well-studied steps that help when mood is low, sent with your full report by email
No right or wrong answers. Just answer for the last two weeks, as honestly as you can.
The PHQ-9 was developed by Drs Kurt Kroenke, Robert Spitzer and Janet Williams and published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine (2001) after a study of 6,000 patients in primary care and obstetrics-gynaecology clinics. A score of 10 or more identified major depression with 88% sensitivity and 88% specificity. A 2019 meta-analysis in the BMJ, pooling individual data from more than 17,000 people, confirmed that 10 is the cut-off that best balances the two. It is one of the most widely used depression measures in the world, including in NHS Talking Therapies. It is a screening tool, not a diagnosis.
Quiz : Anxiety Test (GAD-7)
How much is anxiety affecting you right now?
Everyone worries sometimes. But when worry won’t switch off, when your body stays tense, sleep gets harder and small things feel like too much, anxiety may be carrying more of your life than you realise. It often builds so slowly that it starts to feel normal.
The GAD-7 is the short questionnaire doctors and therapists around the world use to check for anxiety. Seven questions about the last two weeks give you a clear, reliable score, the same one a health professional would look at.
In about 2 minutes, you’ll discover:
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Your anxiety score from 0 to 21, and what it means: none to minimal, mild, moderate or severe
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Whether your score is at the level where doctors suggest talking to a health professional
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Practices that help an anxious nervous system settle, sent with your full report by email
No right or wrong answers. Just answer for the last two weeks, as honestly as you can.
The GAD-7 was developed by Drs Robert Spitzer, Kurt Kroenke, Janet Williams and Bernd Löwe and published in the Archives of Internal Medicine (2006) after a study of 2,740 primary care patients. A score of 10 or more picked up 89% of people with generalized anxiety disorder, and later work (Kroenke and colleagues, Annals of Internal Medicine, 2007) showed it also detects panic disorder, social anxiety and post-traumatic stress. It has since been validated in the general population (Löwe and colleagues, Medical Care, 2008), translated into dozens of languages, and is a standard measure in the UK’s NHS Talking Therapies services. It is a screening tool, not a diagnosis.
Quiz : Adult ADHD Self-Assessment
Is it ADHD, or just a busy life?
Losing track of appointments. Leaving the last details of every project for later. Putting off the tasks that need real thought, then feeling restless the moment you have to sit still. Everyone has days like this. For some adults, it has been the pattern of a whole life, and no one ever put a name on it.
This self-assessment follows the steps a doctor takes. It starts with the World Health Organization’s adult ADHD screener, then looks at all 18 ADHD symptoms, your childhood, the areas of your life affected, your emotions, and other things that can look like ADHD, such as poor sleep, low mood or anxiety.
In about 7 minutes, you’ll discover:
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Your WHO screener score from 0 to 24, and what it means: low, some signs, positive or strongly positive
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How your answers line up with the diagnostic criteria: enough signs now, since childhood, in more than one area of life, with a real impact
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Your pattern (mostly inattentive, mostly hyperactive-impulsive or combined), what is worth mentioning to your doctor, and practical habits for focus and organisation, sent with your full report by email
No right or wrong answers. Just answer for the last six months, as honestly as you can.
Part 1 is the WHO Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS v1.1) Screener, developed by a World Health Organization work group led by Drs Ronald Kessler (Harvard) and Lenard Adler (NYU) and published in Psychological Medicine (2005). Tested against clinical interviews in the US National Comorbidity Survey Replication, its six questions classified adults more accurately than the full 18-question checklist, and in 2024 its authors recommended the 0 to 24 scoring used here, with 14 as the cut-off. The other parts follow the DSM-5-TR criteria for ADHD (American Psychiatric Association, 2022) and the updated European consensus on adult ADHD (Kooij and colleagues, European Psychiatry, 2019): symptoms before the age of 12, in more than one area of life, with a clear impact, and not better explained by something else. Those questions are Holistika’s own and are not a validated scale. This is a self-assessment, not a diagnosis.