PHQ-9 Depression Screening Template

PHQ-9 printable PDF depression screening template with the 9 verbatim items, a difficulty question, and scoring.

This is a ready-made survey template you can use two ways. Print it on paper and hand it out, then scan the completed forms and PaperSurvey reads the answers for you automatically, no manual typing. Or share the very same template as an online web survey. The preview below shows the printable paper version.

Use this template

Copy this template into your account, then customize it to suit your needs.

This PHQ-9 printable PDF gives clinicians a ready-to-scan depression screening form with the 9 verbatim Patient Health Questionnaire items, a difficulty rating, and built-in scoring across two short sections. It prints on a single sheet and takes about two minutes to complete.

What this survey measures

The PHQ-9 screens for the presence and severity of depression over the previous two weeks. The nine grid items map directly to the diagnostic criteria for depressive disorders, covering mood, sleep, energy, appetite, concentration, self-worth, psychomotor changes, and thoughts of self-harm. A final question captures how much these problems interfere with work, home life, and relationships, and the scoring note lets staff calculate a total severity score from 0 to 27.

How to use it on paper

Hand the form to patients in the waiting room, at intake, or during a primary care or behavioral health visit. Patients fill the checkboxes with a blue or black pen and return the sheet at reception. Collect the completed forms and scan them in batches: PaperSurvey reads every checkbox with optical mark recognition and posts the results to your dashboard, so no one retypes answers by hand.

Customize this template

Add your clinic logo, translate the questionnaire for your patient population, or append intake fields such as name and date. Please keep the nine item statements exactly as written so the instrument stays valid. The paper layout reflows automatically as you edit, and every copy you print stays scannable.

The PHQ-9 was developed by Drs. Robert L. Spitzer, Janet B.W. Williams, Kurt Kroenke and colleagues, with an educational grant from Pfizer Inc. No permission is required to reproduce, translate, display or distribute it.

Preview the PDF above, or use this template to start screening on paper today.

Paper and web from one template

Every PaperSurvey template is a hybrid survey: run it on paper and scan the forms, share it online as a web survey, or do both at once and collect all the responses in one place. to see how it looks online, or open it in a new tab. It is a live preview only, so nothing you enter is saved.

Questions in this template

  1. Over the last 2 weeks, how often have you been bothered by any of the following problems?
  2. If you checked off any problems, how difficult have these problems made it for you to do your work, take care of things at home, or get along with other people?

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