Validation of the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 for depression screening among Chinese Americans.
OBJECTIVE
The objective of this study was to validate the Chinese Bilingual version of the Patient Health Questionnaire (CB-PHQ-9) for screening for depression among Chinese Americans in primary care.


METHODS
Chinese-American patients attending a primary care clinic were screened for major depressive disorder (MDD) using the CB-PHQ-9. All patients who scored 15 or higher on the CB-PHQ-9 were interviewed using the Chinese-bilingual Structured Clinical Interview for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, patient version. Eight percent of patients who scored less than 15 on the CB-PHQ-9 were randomly selected and interviewed with the depression module of the Chinese-bilingual Structured Clinical Interview for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, patient version.


RESULTS
During the study, 1940 unduplicated patients completed the CB-PHQ-9. The CB-PHQ-9 had high internal consistency (alpha = 0.91), and the scores of each of its 9 items had moderate to moderately high correlations (0.52-0.85) with the total scores. The sensitivity and specificity of the CB-PHQ-9 for recognizing MDD were found to be 81% and 98%, respectively, and the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was estimated to be 0.97 (SE, 0.01).


CONCLUSIONS
The CB-PHQ-9 is a valid and useful instrument for screening for MDD among Chinese Americans in primary care.
Yeung
Albert
A
Depression Clinical and Research Program, Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA 02114, USA. ayeung@partners.org
Fung
Freddy
F
Yu
Shu-Ching
SC
Vorono
Sienna
S
Ly
Mary
M
Wu
Shirley
S
Fava
Maurizio
M
D001213:Asian / Q000208:ethnology*; D003863:Depression / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000208:ethnology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods*; D008875:Middle Aged; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires