Abstract

We evaluated the reliability, validity and detection rate of the Depressive Syndrome module of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) in general hospital outpatients. Totally 600 general hospital outpatients were evaluated using the PHQ-9. The internal reliability, test-retest reliability and validity were examined. Cronbach's α coefficient of PHQ-9 was 0.857 and the test-retest reliability was 0.947. The correlation coefficient of the nine items with the total score of the scale was 0.588 - 0.784. The sensitivity, specificity of PHQ-9 and Kappa value was 91, 97% and 0.884, respectively. The detection rate was 16.3% (95% CI: 13.4 - 19.3%). The Chinese version PHQ-9 was shown to have good reliability and validity for screening of depressive syndrome in general hospital outpatients.

Key words: Patient health questionnaire, depressive syndrome module-9, reliability, validity, detection rate.