How have you been feeling lately?

1)What is the PHQ-9?

The PHQ-9, short for Patient Health Questionnaire 9-item scale, is a brief questionnaire that screens for depression. It was developed by Kurt Kroenke, Robert Spitzer, and Janet Williams in 2001 and has since become one of the most widely used depression measures in primary care, research, and mental-health services around the world. It asks how often, over the last two weeks, nine common symptoms have bothered you, from low interest and low mood to changes in sleep, appetite, and energy.

Its popularity comes from being short, well validated, and easy to repeat. A doctor can hand it to you in a waiting room, and you can take it again a fortnight later to see whether anything has shifted. That repeatability is a big part of why it is useful: mood is a moving target, and a measure you can retake cheaply tells you more over time than any single reading. The nine items map directly onto the recognised symptoms of a depressive episode, which is why clinicians reach for it so often.

2)Signs and symptoms of depression

Depression is not only low mood; it shows up across the mind, the body, and everyday behaviour, which is part of why it can be so hard to place. The PHQ-9 covers the core signs, but the full picture is broader.

• Mental: low or flat mood, loss of interest or pleasure, hopelessness, guilt or feeling worthless, trouble concentrating or making decisions.
• Physical: tiredness and low energy, changes in sleep or appetite, moving or speaking more slowly, restlessness, and aches with no clear cause.
• Behavioural: withdrawing from people, letting things slide, struggling with work or study, and losing interest in things you used to enjoy.

Everyone has flat, tired, or discouraged stretches; that is a normal part of being human. What the test is really probing is frequency and persistence, how often these have been present over the last two weeks, because that is what separates an ordinary low patch from something worth a closer look.

3)How the scoring works

Each of the nine questions scores from 0 (not at all) to 3 (nearly every day), so your total runs from 0 to 27. A higher total points to more depressive symptoms. The commonly used cut-offs are:

A score of 10 or more is the usual threshold at which clinicians consider a fuller assessment. One item stands slightly apart: the last question asks about thoughts of being better off dead or of hurting yourself. Any answer above zero there is taken seriously on its own, regardless of the total, and is a signal to reach out for support rather than wait.

4)What your score means, and what it doesn't

A single score is a snapshot of the last two weeks, not a label and not a diagnosis. Mood naturally rises and falls with sleep, stress, hormones, workload, illness, and life events, so the direction it moves over time matters far more than any one number. Two people can both score 8 and be in completely different places: one sliding into a hard month, the other climbing out of one.

It is also worth being clear about the test's limits. The PHQ-9 was built to screen for depression, and it relies on your own honest reporting of the last fortnight, so a bad two weeks can inflate it and a good two weeks can flatter it. It does not tell you why you feel the way you do, and low mood can have many causes, from grief and stress to thyroid problems and poor sleep, that only a proper assessment can untangle. This is exactly why retaking it and watching the trend is more informative than fixating on a single result.

5)What to do next

• Minimal or mild: simple daily habits, steady sleep, regular movement, daylight, staying in touch with people, and brief check-ins, often keep things from building.
• Moderate: keep an eye on it, put the basics in place, and consider a conversation with your doctor if it holds or climbs over the coming weeks.
• Moderately severe or severe: it is worth speaking to a doctor or therapist soon. Treatments such as talking therapy and, where appropriate, medication are well established and effective. A screen is a prompt to get a proper assessment, not the assessment itself.
• If the last question, about thoughts of being better off dead or of hurting yourself, was anything other than not at all, please treat that as a reason to reach out today, whatever your total score.
• In every case, retake the test every couple of weeks. The trend line tells you far more than any single reading.

If you are having thoughts of hurting yourself, or of being better off dead, or you feel in immediate danger, you deserve support right now. Please contact local emergency services or a crisis line you trust, or tell someone you are with. These thoughts are more common than people admit, they can ease with help, and reaching out is a sign of strength, not weakness. You do not have to manage this alone.

6)Why tracking mood over time helps

A test taken once tells you where you are today. A test taken regularly tells you where you are heading, and direction is what you can actually act on. Tracking your mood alongside everyday factors like sleep, exercise, and stressful events tends to surface patterns that are invisible from the inside, that your lowest stretches follow short nights, say, or that things reliably lift after a couple of active days. Those patterns are where change becomes possible, because they turn a vague sense of feeling low into specific, addressable causes. Andy is built around exactly this loop: a quick daily check-in, and a clear view of how your mood moves over the weeks.

7)About this test

The PHQ-9 is a public-domain instrument, free to use without permission or fee. This page follows the original scoring and is intended for screening and education only. It does not store your answers and is not a substitute for professional care or diagnosis. Source: Kroenke K, Spitzer RL, Williams JBW (2001), The PHQ-9: validity of a brief depression severity measure, Journal of General Internal Medicine. Last reviewed August 2026.