Youth Self Screening Tool

The PHQ is a self-completed screening tool designed to detect symptoms of depression and signs of suicide.  Because teenage years can be tough, it is often difficult to differentiate between normal growing pains and depression.  If you are wondering if you have depression, you can learn more by answering the questions below. The questionnaire should take less than 5 minutes to complete.

Thinking about yourself over the last two weeks, how often have you been bothered by each symptom? Select the answer that best describes how you have been feeling. 

1. Feeling down, depressed, irritable, or hopeless?
2. Little interest or pleasure in doing things?
3. Trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, or sleeping too
much?
4. Poor appetite, weight loss, or overeating?
5. Feeling tired, or having little energy?
6. Feeling bad about yourself – or feeling that you are a failure, or that you have let yourself or your family down?
7. Trouble concentrating on things like school work, reading, or watching TV?
8. Moving or speaking so slowly that other people could have noticed?

Or the opposite – being so fidgety or restless that you were moving around a lot more than usual?
9. Thoughts that you would be better off dead, or of hurting yourself in some way?
10. In the past year have you felt depressed or sad most days, even if you felt okay sometimes?
11. If you are experiencing any of the problems on this form, how difficult have these problems made it for you to do your work, take care of things at home or get along with other people?
12. Has there been a time in the past month when you have had serious thoughts about ending your life?
13. Have you EVER, in your WHOLE LIFE, tried to kill yourself or made a suicide attempt?

 

ⓒ 1999, Spitzer, Williams, & Kroenke