The diagnostic validity of the PHQ has recently been established in 2 studies involving 3,000 patients in 8 primary care clinics and 3,000 patients in 7 obstetrics-gynecology clinics. The Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ) is a new instrument for making criteria-based diagnoses of depressive and other mental disorders commonly encountered in primary care. Scores on these various measures tend to be highly correlated, 3 and it is not evident that any one measure is superior to the others. 1, 2 Typically, these can be scored as continuous measures of depression severity and also have established cut points above which the probability of major depression is substantially increased. There are a number of case-finding instruments for detecting depression in primary care, ranging from 2 to 28 items in length. Depression is one of the most prevalent and treatable mental disorders and is regularly seen by a wide spectrum of health care providers, including mental health specialists, medical and surgical subspecialists, and primary care clinicians.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |