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A score of ≥10 on the nine-item Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) is accepted widely as indicating possible major depression. However, meta-analyses of the diagnostic accuracy of the PHQ-9 have been limited by methodological flaws. In this new meta-analysis, researchers evaluated the accuracy of the PHQ-9 by using individual participant data from 17,000 patients in 58 studies.
Participants without prior diagnoses of depression completed PHQ-9s. Within 2 weeks, they underwent validated structured diagnostic interviews for depression (semi-structured interviews in 29 studies, fully structured interviews in 14 studies, and the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview [MINI] in 15 studies). Based on these interviews, 2300 participants …