Screening Toolkit
For educational purposes only — a decision-support tool, not a substitute for clinical judgment.
Validated psychiatric screening instruments organized by clinical question. Interactive auto-scoring with evidence-based interpretation guides — every cutoff and psychometric number links to its source study.
All instruments are public domain or freely licensed for clinical use. No copyrighted tools are included.
Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9)
9-item self-report measure of depression severity based on DSM-IV/5 criteria. The most widely validated depression screening tool in primary care.
Patient Health Questionnaire-9
| Not at all (0) | Several days (1) | More than half the days (2) | Nearly every day (3) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Little interest or pleasure in doing things | ||||
| 2 | Feeling down, depressed, or hopeless | ||||
| 3 | Trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleeping too much | ||||
| 4 | Feeling tired or having little energy | ||||
| 5 | Poor appetite or overeating | ||||
| 6 | Feeling bad about yourself -- or that you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down | ||||
| 7 | Trouble concentrating on things, such as reading the newspaper or watching television | ||||
| 8 | Moving or speaking so slowly that other people could have noticed? Or the opposite -- being so fidgety or restless that you have been moving around a lot more than usual | ||||
| 9 | Thoughts that you would be better off dead or of hurting yourself in some way | ||||
| Column totals | |||||
| Add column totals = | / 27 | ||||
If you checked off any problems, how difficult have these problems made it for you to do your work, take care of things at home, or get along with other people?
Little interest or pleasure in doing things
Feeling down, depressed, or hopeless
Trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleeping too much
Feeling tired or having little energy
Poor appetite or overeating
Feeling bad about yourself -- or that you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down
Trouble concentrating on things, such as reading the newspaper or watching television
Moving or speaking so slowly that other people could have noticed? Or the opposite -- being so fidgety or restless that you have been moving around a lot more than usual
Thoughts that you would be better off dead or of hurting yourself in some way
If you checked off any problems, how difficult have these problems made it for you to do your work, take care of things at home, or get along with other people?
Not scored but clinically important -- confirms functional impairment required for DSM diagnosis