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    Patent Pending

    PHQ-9 (Patient Health Questionnaire-9)

    Objectifies degree of depression severity.

    IMPORTANT

    MDCalc provides tools and content intended for use by healthcare professionals, and is not meant for use by patients. While these may be surveys or questions intended for patients, they are meant to be answered in the context of a clinician’s medical care and not on their own to diagnose or treat any disease.

    When to Use
    Pearls/Pitfalls
    Why Use

    Use as a screening tool:

    • To assist the clinician in making the diagnosis of depression.
    • To quantify depression symptoms and monitor severity.
    • The Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ)-9 is the major depressive disorder (MDD) module of the full PHQ.
    • Used to provisionally diagnose depression and grade severity of symptoms in general medical and mental health settings.
    • Scores each of the 9 DSM criteria of MDD as “0” (not at all) to “3” (nearly every day), providing a 0-27 severity score.
    • The last item (“How difficult have these problems made it for you to do your work, take care of things at home, or get along with other people?”) is not included in score, but is a good indicator of the patient’s global impairment and can be used to track treatment response.
    • Higher PHQ-9 scores are associated with decreased functional status and increased symptom-related difficulties, sick days, and healthcare utilization.
    • May have high false-positive rates in primary care settings specifically (one meta-analysis found that only 50% of patients screening positive actually had major depression) (Levis 2019).

    Objectively determines severity of initial symptoms, and also monitors symptom changes and treatment effects over time.

    Ask the patient: how often have they been bothered by the following over the past 2 weeks?

    Not at all
    0
    Several days
    +1
    More than half the days
    +2
    Nearly every day
    +3
    Not at all
    0
    Several days
    +1
    More than half the days
    +2
    Nearly every day
    +3
    Not at all
    0
    Several days
    +1
    More than half the days
    +2
    Nearly every day
    +3
    Not at all
    0
    Several days
    +1
    More than half the days
    +2
    Nearly every day
    +3
    Not at all
    0
    Several days
    +1
    More than half the days
    +2
    Nearly every day
    +3
    Not at all
    0
    Several days
    +1
    More than half the days
    +2
    Nearly every day
    +3
    Not at all
    0
    Several days
    +1
    More than half the days
    +2
    Nearly every day
    +3
    Not at all
    0
    Several days
    +1
    More than half the days
    +2
    Nearly every day
    +3
    Not at all
    0
    Several days
    +1
    More than half the days
    +2
    Nearly every day
    +3

    Result:

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    Next Steps
    Evidence
    Creator Insights
    Dr. Kurt Kroenke

    About the Creator

    Kurt Kroenke, MD, is a professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine and Director of the Career Development, Education and Research Training (CERT) program for the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (CTSI). He has won numerous grants for his research in pain, depression, and anxiety. He has over 300 peer-reviewed research publications.

    To view Dr. Kurt Kroenke's publications, visit PubMed

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    MDCalc loves calculator creators – researchers who, through intelligent and often complex methods, discover tools that describe scientific facts that can then be applied in practice. These are real scientific discoveries about the nature of the human body, which can be invaluable to physicians taking care of patients.
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