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Screening for depression in primary care with Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9): A systematic review

Open access
Costantini, Luigi, Pasquarella, Cesira, Odone, Anna, Colucci, Maria Eugenia, Costanza, Alessandra, Serafini, Gianluca, Aguglia, Andrea, Belvederi Murri, Martino, Brakoulias, Vlasios, Amore, Mario, Ghaemi, S. Nassir, Amerio, Andrea·2021·Journal of Affective Disorders

Abstract

BACKGROUND Depression is a leading cause of disability. International guidelines recommend screening for depression and the Patient Health Questionnaire 9 (PHQ-9) has been identified as the most reliable screening tool. We reviewed the evidence for using it within the primary care setting. METHODS We retrieved studies from MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, CINAHL and the Cochrane Library that carried out primary care-based depression screening using PHQ-9 in populations older than 12, from 1995 to 2018. RESULTS Forty-two studies were included in the systematic review. Most of the studies were cross-sectional (N=40, 95%), conducted in high-income countries (N=27, 71%) and recruited adult populations (N=38, 90%). The accuracy of the PHQ-9 was evaluated in 31 (74%) studies with a two-stage screening system, with structured interview most often carried out by primary care and mental health professionals. Most of the studies employed a cut-off score of 10 (N=24, 57%, total range 5 - 15). The overall sensitivity of PHQ-9 ranged from 0.37 to 0.98, specificity from 0.42 to 0.99, positive predictive value from 0.09 to 0.92, and negative predictive value from 0.8 to 1. LIMITATIONS Lack of longitudinal studies, small sample size, and the heterogeneity of primary-care settings limited the generalizability of our results. CONCLUSIONS PHQ-9 has been widely validated and is recommended in a two-stage screening process. Longitudinal studies are necessary to provide evidence of long-term screening effectiveness.

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Metadata

Authors
Costantini, L., Pasquarella, C., Odone, A., Colucci, M. E., Costanza, A., Serafini, G., Aguglia, A., Belvederi Murri, M., Brakoulias, V., Amore, M., Ghaemi, S. N., & Amerio, A.
Venue
Journal of Affective Disorders
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2021-01
Volume
279
Pages
473-483
ISSN
0165-0327 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W3092036847
Cited by
733
References
61
FWCI
8.83
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
bronze

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Screening for depression in primary care with Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9): A systematic review. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1016/j.jad.2020.09.131
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Costantini, L., Pasquarella, C., Odone, A., Colucci, M. E., Costanza, A., Serafini, G., Aguglia, A., Belvederi Murri, M., Brakoulias, V., Amore, M., Ghaemi, S. N., & Amerio, A. (2021). Screening for depression in primary care with Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9): A systematic review. Journal of Affective Disorders. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2020.09.131

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.