PHQ-2 assesses which symptoms?

• A. Depressed mood and anhedonia
• B. Anxiety and irritability
• C. Mania
• D. Sleep disturbance

Answer: (A)

The main concept being tested is that the PHQ-2 is a brief screening tool that focuses on two core depressive symptoms: depressed mood and anhedonia. These two symptoms are central to recognizing major depressive disorder, and the PHQ-2 asks how often you have felt down, depressed, or hopeless and how often you have little interest or pleasure in doing things over the past two weeks. If these raise concern, clinicians usually proceed to the PHQ-9 for a fuller assessment.

So, the two items target depressed mood and anhedonia, not anxiety/irritability, mania, or sleep disturbance. Anxiety and irritability relate to other conditions or aspects of mood but aren’t the two questions on the PHQ-2. Mania is a feature of bipolar disorder and isn’t addressed by the PHQ-2. Sleep disturbance is common in depression but is not one of the two core PHQ-2 items.