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%
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