Evidence map›Paper›PMID 40178057›Full record

ArticleInternational journal of methods in psychiatric research2025

Prevalence Estimation Using a Depression Screening Tool in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey: Comparison of Different Cutoffs.

Ali Mertcan Köse, Paul Petzold, Dario Zocholl, Polychronis Kostoulas, Matthias Rose, Felix Fischer

Abstract readComparative Study
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
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Article in International journal of methods in psychiatric research, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

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3 · Its place in the literature

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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

6 authors.

Ali Mertcan KöseDepartment of Computer Programming, Istanbul Ticaret University, Istanbul, Turkey.ORCID 0000-0002-5464-9441
Paul PetzoldCharité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Medizinische Klinik Mit Schwerpunkt für Psychosomatik, Center for Patient-Centered Outcomes Research, Berlin, Germany.ORCID 0009-0007-2669-8821
Dario ZochollInstitute of Medical Biometry, Informatics and Epidemiology, University Hospital Bonn, Bonn, Germany.
Polychronis KostoulasLaboratory of Epidemiology & Artificial Intelligence, Faculty of Public & One Health, University of Thessaly, Karditsa, Greece.
Matthias RoseCharité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Medizinische Klinik Mit Schwerpunkt für Psychosomatik, Center for Patient-Centered Outcomes Research, Berlin, Germany.
Felix FischerCharité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Medizinische Klinik Mit Schwerpunkt für Psychosomatik, Center for Patient-Centered Outcomes Research, Berlin, Germany.ORCID 0000-0002-9693-6676

Funding

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) 530401393European Cooperation in Science and Technology E-Cost-CA18208-93c7fb4
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

objectivesThe National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) in the US relies on the depression screening tool PHQ-9 to assess depressive symptoms in the general population. For prevalence estimation, PHQ-9s imperfect diagnostic accuracy can be modeled with a Bayesian Latent Class Model. We investigate the impact of different cutoffs on prevalence estimation.

methodsWe used data from the 16-th wave of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). We assessed the joint posterior distribution to asssess the prevalence of major depression as well as sensitivity and specificity of the PHQ-9 at cutoffs 5 to 15. We also assessed the impact of weakly and strongly informative prevalence priors.

resultsData from 9693 participants of the NHANES Wave 2019-2020 were analyzed. Under weakly informative prevalence priors, prevalence estimates ranged from 16.0% (95% CrI: 0.3%-87.8%) when using a cut-off of 5% to 3.9% (0.2%-12.7%) at 13. More informative prevalence priors led to narrower credible intervals, but the observed data was still in accordance with a wide range of possible MDD prevalence estimates.

conclusionsRegardless of the cutoff and the prevalence prior chosen, prevalence estimation of major depressive disorders in the NHANES based on the PHQ-9 is imprecise.

Indexed as

Major Depressive DisorderNutrition SurveysPsychiatric Status Rating ScalesAdolescentAdultAgedBayes TheoremFemaleHumansMaleMiddle AgedPrevalenceSensitivity and SpecificityUnited StatesYoung AdultBayesian latent class modelsdepression prevalenceNational Health and Nutrition Examination SurveyPHQ‐9

Identifiers

PMID40178057
PMCPMC11966556

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