The validation of personal health questionnaire amongst people of Pakistani family origin living in the United Kingdom.
BACKGROUND
The Personal Health Questionnaire (PHQ) was developed to screen for depressive disorder in an English speaking population. Its validity in Urdu speaking people of Pakistani family origin living in UK is yet to be established.


METHODS
The PHQ was used to screen for depression in a two phase primary care based study of depressive disorder in people of Pakistani family origin residing in Manchester, UK. A proportion of high scorers (PHQ> or =7) and a random selection of low scorers (PHQ 0-6) were interviewed with the Psychiatric Assessment Schedule (PAS) to confirm caseness (ID> or =5). A receiver operator characteristic curve (ROC) analysis was carried out to confirm the optimum threshold value.


RESULTS
The PHQ was used to screen 218 subjects with cut off of PHQ> or =7. 46 high scorers and 31 low scorers were interviewed in second stage using PAS. At this threshold PHQ has a sensitivity of 70.4% and specificity of 89.3%.


CONCLUSIONS
Findings of this study confirm high sensitivity and specificity of PHQ amongst people of Pakistani family origin. It can be used as a screening instrument to detect depression in Urdu speaking population in UK.
Husain
N
N
Rawnsley Building Manchester Royal Infirmary, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9WL, UK. nusrathusain@btopenworld.com
Waheed
W
W
Tomenson
B
B
Creed
F
F
D000328:Adult; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000208:ethnology*; D004641:Emigration and Immigration / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010154:Pakistan / Q000208:ethnology; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D006113:United Kingdom