The Patient Health Questionnaire 2 (PHQ-2) is a brief screen for depression that can be used in primary care. It uses the 2 questions for depression from the patient questionnaire of PRIME-MD (see 18.25.01).
NOTE: PRIME-MD is a trademark of Pfizer Inc, which also holds the copyright. For a complimentary copy of PHQ materials that can be reproduced contact Dr Spitzer at rls8@columbia.edu.
Interval: past 2 weeks
Questions: 2
|
Frequency over the past 2 weeks |
Points |
|
not at all |
0 |
|
several days |
1 |
|
more than half |
2 |
|
nearly every day |
3 |
where:
• The severity of the depressive symptoms is not graded. This opens the possibility of a severity score with (severity points) * (frequency points).
• In the implementation I used a raw number of days. The alternative is a 4 point Likert scale.
total score =
= SUM(points for the 2 questions)
Interpretation:
• minimum score: 0
• maximums score: 6
• The higher the score the more likely the patient has a depressive disorder.
• The highest Youden index is a score >= 3.
Performance to detect any depressive illness (performance for detecting major depression is shown in Table 2, page 1287).
|
PHQ-2 |
Sensitivity |
Specificity |
|
0 |
|
|
|
1 |
91% |
65% |
|
2 |
82% |
80% |
|
3 |
62% |
95% |
|
4 |
51% |
98% |
|
5 |
31% |
98.7% |
|
6 |
12% |
99.8% |
Specialty: Psychiatry
