This test is composed of 9 sentences, each one representing an anxiety symptom.

Ask the patient: how often has he/she been bothered by the following over the past 2 weeks?
1. Feeling bad about yourself, or that you are a failure, or have let yourself or your family down
2. Feeling down, depressed, or hopeless
3. Feeling tired or having little energy
4. Little interest or pleasure in doing things
5. Moving or speaking so slowly that other people could have noticed. Or the opposite, being so fidgety or restless that you have been moving around a lot more than usual.
6. Poor appetite or overeating
7. Thoughts that you would be better off dead or of hurting yourself in some way
8. Trouble concentrating on things, such as reading the newspaper or watching televisión
9. Trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleeping too much

Each sentence has four possible answers
Not at all = 0
Several Days = 1
More than half the days = 2
Nearly every day = 3

Score ≥ 10: likely major depression in the general population.
In a patient with serious illness, a score ≥ 6 is appropriate for treatment.

See reference for more information.

Adapted from Tools and Resources Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC). PHQ-9: Validated screening tool for depression. Internet. https://www.capc.org/documents/download/57/
Accessed on October 15, 2021.