How do you incorporate rating scales such as the PHQ-9 into your treatment of major depressive disorder?
Do you administer them at intake, follow-up, or both? How frequently do you use them? How do you gauge the accuracy and validity of patients’ responses? What are the benefits and drawbacks of using these scales?
Answer from: at Community Practice
My practice has evolved (more therapy now), but for 20+ years, I administered the PHQ-9 and the GAD-7 at every visit for every patient. During those years, everyone was on some form of medication, and it felt relevant to see how they were responding. Also, occasionally someone would have worse numbe...
In our outpatient resident clinic, both PHQ-9 as well as GAD-7 are administered at each visit if they are being seen for depression or anxiety, but if it's only ADHD and that's been established, then I don't have them do it. It's something that can give an idea of what we need to be treating, but so...
PHQ-9 is most helpful for me to give an objective tracking of progress over time, just like tracking an A1C for a diabetic.
Patients will often say they feel like nothing has changed, nothing is working, etc., but then I can point to how their PHQ-9 scores on intake were much higher than they are n...
For a time in our reproductive (perinatal) psychiatry clinic, we would administer both the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale and the WHO 5-Question Inventory of Well-Being. These two scales track together relatively well; well-being may improve when depression lifts. When these measures diverge, ...