ArticlePsychological medicine2021
Comparison between self-administered depression questionnaires and patients' own views of changes in their mood: a prospective cohort study in primary care.
Article in Psychological medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Associations Between Depressive Symptoms and Memory Functions in Persons with HIV: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Neuropsychology review · 2026Pooled it
- The Effect of Reflexology on Anxiety in Patients Undergoing Open Heart Surgery: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.The journal of nursing research : JNR · 2026Pooled it
- What are the socioeconomic risk factors of depression among the elderly in China: a systematic review.BMC public health · 2026Pooled it
- Clinical effectiveness of the Circle of Security-Parenting group intervention for birthing parents in perinatal mental health services in England (COSI): a pragmatic, multicentre, assessor-masked, randomised controlled trial.The lancet. Psychiatry · 2025Trial
- Adolescent and Family-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Pediatric Bipolar Disorders: An Open Trial and Individual Trajectories Study in Routine Psychiatric Care.Child psychiatry and human development · 2024Trial
- Effectiveness of Schema Therapy versus Cognitive Behavioral Therapy versus Supportive Therapy for Depression in Inpatient and Day Clinic Settings: A Randomized Clinical Trial.Psychotherapy and psychosomatics · 2024Trial
- Varying Forms of Childhood Sexual Abuse and Late-Life Depression Among Older Adults Living with HIV.AIDS and behavior · 2026Article
- Variation in the recall of socially rewarding information and symptoms of generalised anxiety: evidence from two cohorts.BMC psychiatry · 2025Article
- Trajectories of Mental Distress and Resilience During the COVID-19 Pandemic Among Healthcare Workers.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The Safety of Digital Mental Health Interventions: Findings and Recommendations From a Qualitative Study Exploring Users' Experiences, Concerns, and Suggestions.JMIR human factors · 2025Article
- Depressive symptoms and heart rate variability in perinatal women: A narrative review.Japan journal of nursing science : JJNS · 2025Review
- Associations between diet quality, food insecurity, physical activity, social connectedness and depressive symptomology in Australian university students: a cross-sectional study.Frontiers in nutrition · 2025Article
- An adaptive multi-graph neural network with multimodal feature fusion learning for MDD detection.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Variation in symptoms of common mental disorders in the general population during the COVID-19 pandemic: longitudinal cohort study.BJPsych open · 2024Article
- Relationship between change in social evaluation learning and mood in early antidepressant treatment: A prospective cohort study in primary care.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2023Article
- Digital phenotyping in depression diagnostics: Integrating psychiatric and engineering perspectives.World journal of psychiatry · 2022Review
- Effective dose 50 method as the minimal clinically important difference: Evidence from depression trials.Journal of clinical epidemiology · 2021Article
- Digitally managing depression: A fully remote randomised attention-placebo controlled trial.Digital healthArticle
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundSelf-administered questionnaires are widely used in primary care and other clinical settings to assess the severity of depressive symptoms and monitor treatment outcomes. Qualitative studies have found that changes in questionnaire scores might not fully capture patients' experience of changes in their mood but there are no quantitative studies of this issue. We examined the extent to which changes in scores from depression questionnaires disagreed with primary care patients' perceptions of changes in their mood and investigated factors influencing this relationship.
methodsProspective cohort study assessing patients on four occasions, 2 weeks apart. Patients (N = 554) were recruited from primary care surgeries in three UK sites (Bristol, Liverpool and York) and had reported depressive symptoms or low mood in the past year [68% female, mean age 48.3 (s.d. 12.6)]. Main outcome measures were changes in scores on patient health questionnaire (PHQ-9) and beck depression inventory (BDI-II) and the patients' own ratings of change.
resultsThere was marked disagreement between clinically important changes in questionnaire scores and patient-rated change, with disagreement of 51% (95% CI 46-55%) on PHQ-9 and 55% (95% CI 51-60%) on BDI-II. Patients with more severe anxiety were less likely, and those with better mental and physical health-related quality of life were more likely, to report feeling better, having controlled for depression scores.
conclusionsOur results illustrate the limitations of self-reported depression scales to assess clinical change. Clinicians should be cautious in interpreting changes in questionnaire scores without further clinical assessment.
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