Depression screening

Screening for depression doesn't have to be time-consuming. The Patient Health Questionnaire is a tool designed to correspond with the criteria doctors use to diagnose major bouts of depression. It's a questionnaire you complete yourself.

Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ9)*

Instructions

  1. Click the box that best describes how often you encounter these feelings.
  2. Click the View results button at the bottom of the form. You can change your answers at any time and click the View results button to update your results.
Over the last two weeks, how often have you been bothered by any of the following problems? Not at allSeveral daysMore than half the daysNearly every day
1. Little interest or pleasure in doing things.
2. Feeling down, depressed or hopeless.
3. Trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleeping too much.
4. Feeling tired or having little energy.
5. Poor appetite or overeating.
6. Feeling bad about yourself — or that you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down.
7. Trouble concentrating on things, such as reading the newspaper or watching television.
8. Moving or speaking so slowly that other people could have noticed. Or the opposite — being so fidgety or restless that you have been moving around a lot more than usual.
9. Thoughts that you would be better off dead, or of hurting yourself in some way.



Learn more about depression

To learn more about depression, log in to Member Secured Services and click the Health and Wellness tab.

*This screening test is not intended to give a diagnosis for clinical depression. But it may help identify any depressive symptoms and determine whether you need an evaluation by a medical professional. Make sure you see your doctor if you think you might have symptoms of depression.

Developed by Drs. Robert L. Spitzer, Janet B.W. Williams, Kurt Kroenke and colleagues, with an educational grant from Pfizer Inc.
Copyright © Pfizer Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission.

page modified 10/06/2011