Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) Test

This Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) Template page helps primary care groups, behavioral health programs, employee assistance partners, and digital health teams implement a repeatable depression symptom screen with the same nine items and four-point timeframe scale people expect—so trends compare wave to wave.

Use it when you need structured intake before a visit, remote monitoring between appointments, or population screening where a clinician-defined pathway turns scores into timely conversation—not passive dashboards.

Important: This template supports screening, care navigation, documentation, or quality improvement workflows. It does not replace qualified medical, legal, or privacy review, and it does not constitute clinical advice.

What the PHQ-9 captures (two-week window)

The PHQ-9 asks how often, over the past two weeks, each of nine symptom clusters occurred. Response options are usually scored 0 to 3 (from “not at all” through “nearly every day”). Total scores are often grouped into rough severity bands for screening and monitoring—for example, minimal through severe ranges—while remembering that borderline scores still deserve clinical judgment, comorbid conditions, and context (sleep, grief, substances, trauma).

Build the instrument so scoring stays honest

• Keep item text and order aligned with the version your medical director or protocol approves; ad hoc paraphrases break comparability with published cutoffs.
• Use a matrix or parallel Likert block so all nine items share one scale legend—see matrix questions.
• Add branching only after clinical review: for example, an immediate safety module when item nine is positive—see skip logic.

Safety and triage (especially item nine)

• Publish crisis lines and emergency guidance for your region on the same flow; an online form is never a substitute for 911 or local crisis services.
• Route elevated or positive safety responses to named on-call roles with coverage hours your organization can meet—use e-mail notifications or approved integrations, not an abandoned shared inbox.
• Separate program analytics from clinical queues so quality metrics never delay urgent follow-up.

Administration timing and channel fit

• Primary care or behavioral health: schedule around visits or care-plan milestones so results connect to a clinician conversation.
• Digital or employer programs: avoid “survey fatigue” by spacing full PHQ-9 repeats unless a licensed pathway defines closer monitoring; pair with plain-language purpose text at the top of the form.

Offer multilingual surveys when your population needs them; translate clinical phrasing with reviewers who know behavioral health terminology, not only UI strings.

Analysis that respects privacy and purpose

Use survey data analysis under policies your privacy office approves—mental health responses need access controls, retention limits, and minimum group reporting for benchmarks.

• Trend at the cohort level for program quality; route individual scores only through clinical workflows authorized to act on them.
• Pair optional short open text with moderation rules before quotes appear in leadership readouts—see free text questions.

PHQ-9 program KPIs to monitor (operations)

• Time from positive screen (or item nine flag) to human review against your SLA.
• Completion rate and drop-off by device—mobile layouts matter for equitable access.
• Percentage of screens that connect to a documented next step (visit scheduled, care manager outreach, declined with informed choice)—not scores floating in a database.
• Repeat administration cadence versus policy—catch oversurveying early.

Mistakes that undermine PHQ-9 programs

• Treating total score as a label instead of a prompt for clinical follow-up.
• Hiding crisis resources below the fold or on a different page than item nine.
• Mixing PHQ-9 with marketing or engagement questions in the same block—stigma and skip patterns suffer.
• Changing anchors or timeframe text between waves and still calling results “trends.”
• Promising anonymity while storing name, MRN, or employee ID on the same row without a lawful basis and access log.

Helpful resources

Use create survey, make your questions required only where ethics and protocol allow opt-outs, and website embedding for portals patients already trust.

Then read survey design guide, close ended questions, and open ended questions to keep optional context fields short and clinically usable—without turning a screen into an unstructured essay.

Build and launch in Responsly

Publish PHQ-9 flows in Responsly with stable wording for trending, branching that prioritizes safety, notifications to staffed queues, and data handling that matches your BAAs and policies—so screening supports care, not checkbox compliance alone.