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July 1, 2010The Annals of Family Medicine1,329 citationsOpen Access

Validation of PHQ-2 and PHQ-9 to Screen for Major Depression in the Primary Care Population

BABruce ArrollFGFelicity Goodyear‐SmithSCSue Crengle

Key Points

  • To validate the PHQ-2 and PHQ-9 screening questionnaires against a reference standard clinical interview for detecting major depression in a primary care setting.
  • Conducted a diagnostic validation study in an exclusively primary care population.
  • Compared PHQ-2 and PHQ-9 score thresholds against a reference standard clinical interview.
  • A PHQ-2 score threshold of 2 or higher demonstrated good sensitivity but poor specificity, correctly identifying more depressed individuals than a threshold of 3 or higher.
  • A PHQ-9 score threshold of 10 or higher detected more individuals with major depression than the originally described scoring algorithm.

Abstract

We report the largest validation study of the PHQ-2 and PHQ-9, compared with a reference standard interview, undertaken in an exclusively primary care population. The PHQ-2 score or 2 or higher had good sensitivity but poor specificity in detecting major depression. Using a PHQ-2 threshold score of 2 or higher rather than 3 or higher resulted in more depressed patients being correctly identified. A PHQ-9 score of 10 or higher appears to detect more depressed patients than the originally described PHQ-9 scoring for major depression.

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Cite This Study

Arroll et al. (2010) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/69df3e7fe9ae8ea0dc614179https://doi.org/10.1370/afm.1139
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