You are assessing a patient for anxious foreboding. Before revealing the answer, decide what you would ask.

Ask whether the patient has a persistent sense that something bad is going to happen, and specifically ask them to describe what they anticipate — in anxious foreboding, the anticipated misfortune is characteristically vague or unspecified, rather than a named, particular fear, so a patient who cannot pin down what exactly they fear despite the feeling's intensity is providing a useful positive finding. Establish how long the feeling has been present and whether it is continuous or comes and goes as discrete episodes, since this distinguishes it from a panic attack. Ask whether the feeling attaches to any specific object or situation, since its absence is what distinguishes anxious foreboding from a phobic pattern, and explore whether the feeling has, at any point, crystallised into a specific, fixed belief about a particular threat, which would instead raise the question of a delusion of persecution or catastrophe.