What scale is useful for measuring depression that maxes out the PHQ-9?
May 10, 2019 11:07 PM   Subscribe

I would like to track my depression with a quantitative metric, to measure the effects of medicine, situational changes, etc. The PHQ-9 is what I would ordinarily use. However, my depression severity is often higher than it is able to differentiate. What are metrics that work for tracking gradations within extremely severe depression?
posted by anonymous to Science & Nature (4 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Are there specific behaviors that you either do a lot or fail to do? Most people in the middle of severe mental health episodes will have some particular patterns going on. The emotional part is kind of hard to track, but the other things around it, the parts that are really specific to you, might be more useful, especially as ongoing metrics. Did you shower today? How many days out of the last seven did you manage that? Logging specifically when you self-harm or have suicidal thoughts could help you see if those things are happening less often or for shorter periods of time, both of which would be real improvements. But even littler stuff: what time did you get to bed, what did you eat. I bet there are browser extensions that could, rather than trying to enforce behavior, just let you check how long you spent on Youtube today. Obviously, it'd depend a lot on the specific manifestations of your brain crud.

Aside from that, I am just getting a FitBit now, and part of the reason I'm doing it is to try to track how my psych medications are impacting my sleep and activity in a way that is more than just "I think I feel better/worse today." If that kind of thing is financially feasible, it might be another good source of metrics that will make smaller changes more obvious.
posted by Sequence at 7:30 AM on May 11, 2019 [1 favorite]


If you're looking for a valid psychometric scale, Beck's Depression Inventory [PDF] is often used for this kind of thing. I am most familiar with the PHQ-9 and the MHI-36. The MHI inventory would likely not be as useful to you, because it measures general mental well-being.

On a personal note, I have found tracking my own moods via a mood tracking app (I use eMoods), combined with manual entry of data (e.g., meds taken, exercise time, etc. - I can do this in eMoods too) and other passive data collection methods using wearables &c., to be far more useful and reliable than a psychometric test. YMMV. I collocate much of this personal data from various services using the exist.io app.
posted by sockermom at 8:52 AM on May 11, 2019 [3 favorites]


If I were doing this, I would simply rate my depression on a scale of 0-100 and not worry about using a standard psychometric scale. Presumably, you're not going to publish the results anywhere. If this is just for your own personal use, then using Beck's, PHQ-9, HAM-D or whatever seems like overkill.
posted by alex1965 at 7:00 PM on May 11, 2019 [2 favorites]


The standard depression inventories are pretty useless for me too - I've always been in the severe+ zone on the Beck. I don't think any such metric exists besides maybe (and I have used this at times) the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale and similar. I made my own list of (very specific) symptoms on patientslikeme and rate it there daily; it gives me more fine-grained data.
posted by ahundredjarsofsky at 2:36 AM on May 13, 2019


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