Validation and calibration of the patient health questionnaire (PHQ-9) in Argentina

Abstract

Background The Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) is a brief tool to assess the presence and severity of depressive symptoms. This study aimed to validate and calibrate the PHQ-9 to determine appropriate cut-off points for different degrees of severity of depression in Argentina. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional study on an intentional sample of adult ambulatory care patients with different degrees of severity of depression. All patients who completed the PHQ-9 were further interviewed by a trained clinician with the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI) and the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II). Reliability and validity tests, including receiver operating curve analysis, were performed. Results One hundred sixty-nine patients were recruited with a mean age of 47.4 years (SD = 14.8), of whom 102 were females (60.4%). The local PHQ-9 had high internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.87) and satisfactory convergent validity with the BDI-II scale [Pearson’s correlation = 0.88 (p < 0.01)]. For the diagnosis of Major Depressive Episode (MDE) according to the MINI, a PHQ-9 ≥ 8 was the optimal cut-off point found (sensitivity 88.2%, specificity 86.6%, PPV 90.91%). The local version of PHQ-9 showed good ability to discriminate among depression severity categories according to the BDI-II scale. The best cut off points were 6–8 for mild cases, 9–14 for moderate and 15 or more for severe depressive symptoms respectively. Conclusions The Argentine version of the PHQ-9 questionnaire has shown acceptable validity and reliability for both screening and severity assessment of depressive symptoms.

The role of perceived social support on depression and sleep during the COVID-19 pandemic

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Psychological Impact of the Civil War and COVID-19 on Libyan Medical Students: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…Each of the 9-item questions rates depression using a 4-item Likert scale of 0 (not at all), 1 (several days), 2 (more than half the days), and 3 (nearly every day), with a total score of 0-27 (Kroenke et al, 2001). A score of 0-4 was regarded as minimal, 5-9 was regarded as mild, 10-14 was regarded as moderate, 15-19 was regarded as moderately severe, and 20-27 was regarded as severe (Urtasun et al, 2019). A PHQ-9 score of ≥15 was regarded as the cutoff score to detect depressive symptoms (Kroenke et al, 2001;Levis et al, 2019).…”

Fear of COVID-19 scale: Validity, reliability and factorial invariance in Argentina’s general population

“…Each item has four Likert-type response options (0 ¼ not at all, 1 ¼ several days, 2 ¼ more than half the days, and 3 ¼ almost every day). We used the recently validated version for the Argentinean population (Urtasun et al, 2019), which has a high internal consistency and evidence of convergent validity with the BDI-II scale. The sum of the responses to each item yields a total score ranging from 0 to 27, where high scores indicate a greater frequency of depressive symptoms.…”