Youth screening depression: Validation of the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) in a representative sample of adolescents.

Background: Depression symptoms and mood disorders constitute one of the major public health challenges among youths. Thus, early prevention and intervention for depression should be a priority. The main goal of the present study was to validate the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) scores in a school-based sample of non-clinical adolescents.
Method: Stratified random sampling was conducted. Participants were 2235 students (M = 14.49, SD =1.76, range= 12-18 years), 52.9 % were female, from 34 secondary schools in Spain. Several previously validated self-reported questionnaires of mental health and psychopathology were administrated.
Results: The unidimensional factorial model of the PHQ-9 items showed adequate goodness of fit indices. Strong measurement invariance across gender was found. Omega for the PHQ-9 total score was 0.87. The PHQ-9 total score was positively associated with anxiety symptoms and emotional and behavioral problems, and negatively associated with prosocial behavior and quality of life.
Conclusions: The PHQ-9 is a brief, easy, and reliable tool for assessing self-reported depressive symptoms in both clinical and school settings. PHQ-9 may be used as a screening tool for universal early detection and monitorization of depression symptoms during adolescence.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier B.V.)