Content of the questionnaire
| Target audience | Adults |
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| Application | The Patient Health Questionnaire is the most used screening questionnaire for mental health issues in primary care. It is also gaining increasing acceptance in secondary care. Because of its sensitivity to change, the PHQ is not only relevant for use in screening, but can also be applied for outcome monitoring. In essence, it captures the psychological and somatoform disorders with the highest prevalence. There are many different versions of the PHQ available:
• PHQ. The full version, which is the most complete measure of all different versions. In essence, it contains all of them as scales. The different subparts of the full PHQ and thus the different, more specialized versions of it, are outlined in the following. |
| Composition | The different versions of the PHQ contain different amounts of items, the answer options also differ per scale. |
Psychometric properties
| Reliability & Validity | The psychometric properties of the different versions of the PHQ have been investigated in many different studies from a considerable research grant Pfizer Inc. The properties are in the range of good to excellent, concerning the different scales. Overall, it is a very good and economical instrument that has been proven effective in clinical use. |
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Literature and copyright
Löwe, B., Gräfe, K., Zipfel, S., Spitzer, R. L., Herrmann-Lingen, C., Witte, S., & Herzog, W. (2003). Detecting panic disorder in medical and psychosomatic outpatients: comparative validation of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, the Patient Health Questionnaire, a screening question, and physicians’ diagnosis. Journal of psychosomatic research, 55(6), 515-519.
Löwe, B., Gräfe, K., Zipfel, S., Witte, S., Loerch, B., & Herzog, W. (2004). Diagnosing ICD-10 depressive episodes: superior criterion validity of the Patient Health Questionnaire. Psychotherapy and psychosomatics, 73(6), 386-390.
Löwe, B., Kroenke, K., Herzog, W., & Gräfe, K. (2004). Measuring depression outcome with a brief self-report instrument: sensitivity to change of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9). Journal of affective disorders, 81(1), 61-66.
Löwe, B., Spitzer, R. L., Gräfe, K., Kroenke, K., Quenter, A., Zipfel, S., … & Herzog, W. (2004). Comparative validity of three screening questionnaires for DSM-IV depressive disorders and physicians’ diagnoses. Journal of affective disorders, 78(2), 131-140.
© Pfizer Inc., Löwe B, Spitzer RL, Zipfel S, Herzog W.,
