Assessing Depression in the Primary Care Setting

Abstract

Depression affects almost 10% of the adult population in the United States but often goes unrecognized and untreated. The World Health Organization predicts depression soon to be the second leading cause of disability. Recognizing the signs and symptoms of depression and then feeling confident to treat are limitations many primary care providers acknowledge. In this study, significantly more patients were identified as moderately to severely depressed using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) screening tool as compared to the clinic’s usual care practice of patient self-report. This study examines the PHQ-9, an evidence-based screening tool, to assist primary care providers in identifying depression. It also offers evidenced-based algorithms and websites to assist primary care providers with treatment protocols. The purpose of this article is to evaluate whether screening patients for depression using the PHQ-9 questionnaire is an effective tool in identifying patients with depression compared to the clinic’s usual care practice of self-report. Implementing an evidence-based screening tool in the primary care setting assisted identifying those at risk for depression. This study of 200 patients in the primary care setting demonstrated the effectiveness of using the PHQ-9 as an efficient and accurate depression screening tool. Results of this study were chi-square analysis revealed that a significantly higher proportion of patients were newly diagnosed with depression in the study group than in the comparison group, χ2(1, N = 200) = 9.96, p < .01.