depression test
Nine questions about the last two weeks, scored right here in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere and we don’t ask for an email.
This is the PHQ-9, usually the first thing a clinician reaches for when depression comes up. It doesn’t diagnose. It shows how heavy the last two weeks were, and whether this belongs in a conversation with a person rather than a website.
The last question asks about thoughts of death. It’s the question that matters most here.
scored in your browser · answers go nowhere
0 of 9 answered — the result appears on its own once everything is answered
your result
0 of 27
One of your answers marks thoughts of hurting yourself. That is the line worth stopping at right here, whatever the total says. If things are hard right now, call — someone will answer, and they will be on your side.
- helplines in your country · free and confidential
- findahelpline.com
- us & canada · suicide and crisis lifeline
- 988
- uk & ireland · samaritans
- 116 123
about this questionnaire
The PHQ-9 is built from the nine features diagnostic manuals use to describe depression. Each is scored zero to three, giving a total between zero and twenty-seven over a two-week window.
The cut-offs at five, ten, fifteen and twenty divide the result into mild, moderate, moderately severe and severe. Ten is where things usually start being taken seriously.
What it can’t do. It doesn’t separate depression from the conditions that mimic it: an underactive thyroid, anaemia, B12 deficiency, medication side effects, burnout, months of lost sleep. It doesn’t see bipolar disorder — which changes treatment entirely, to the point where ordinary antidepressants can do harm. And it doesn’t distinguish grief from depression, though they are different and want different things.
Which is why no one treats a score. Doctors use it to decide whether to keep asking.
short answers
- Does this diagnose depression?
- No, and no questionnaire does. A diagnosis comes from a conversation covering how long, in what circumstances, and what else is happening in your body. The scale is a reason to have that conversation.
- Do my answers go anywhere?
- No. Everything is scored in your browser: neither your answers nor the result reach a server, we don’t ask for an email, and the result disappears with the tab. Like any site, we run web analytics; what it collects is set out in the privacy policy.
- My score is high but I don’t feel sad. Is that possible?
- More often than people expect. Depression isn’t always tears — it frequently shows up as emptiness, irritability, a body with nothing in it, and an inability to enjoy anything. Which is why the PHQ-9 asks about more than mood.
- I answered yes to the last item. What now?
- Read the block of numbers below and call one if things are hard right now. Thoughts of death are a common symptom of depression and they lift as it does; the danger is a decision made before it lifts. Tell a doctor or someone close — it isn’t an admission of weakness, it changes the plan.
- Can I retake it?
- Yes, every two to four weeks. Clinicians do the same: the trend tells you more than one number.
read next
signs of depression burnout can’t sleep
what we read
- Kroenke K., Spitzer R. L., Williams J. B. W. The PHQ-9: validity of a brief depression severity measure. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 2001;16(9):606–13 — the original scale and cut-offs. pubmed
- Levis B., Benedetti A., Thombs B. D. Accuracy of Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) for screening to detect major depression: individual participant data meta-analysis. BMJ, 2019;365:l1476 — 58 studies, individual participant data. pubmed
The scale finds no sign of depression across the last two weeks. That isn’t a promise things are easy — only that these nine particular things haven’t been happening much lately.
If you came looking for this test for a reason, it may be worth looking elsewhere: anxiety, burnout and long-term lost sleep produce a similar feeling, and a depression scale doesn’t catch them.
Something is there, still in the mild range. In this band clinicians usually watch rather than treat: what matters is where it sits in two to four weeks.
What helps and needs nobody’s permission: sleeping on a schedule, moving every day even a little, not spending whole days alone. Dull, and better supported by evidence than anything else you can do unaided.
If it gets heavier over the next month, don’t wait it out.
From ten on, this is usually called depression. Handling it alone rarely works from here, and willpower has nothing to do with it: depression takes away energy and the wanting — the very things people pull themselves up with.
The person to see is a psychiatrist or a therapist. Depression responds well to treatment — therapy, and medication where it is needed.
And the feeling that nothing will help is itself a symptom, not a conclusion.
That’s a high score. It has probably been hard for more than a week or two, and most of your energy is going into holding on.
Honest answer: a website and an app don’t solve this. You need a doctor — a psychiatrist or a therapist, and preferably this week rather than someday.
If making the appointment yourself feels impossible, that is a reasonable thing to ask someone close to do. A small task for them, a large one for you right now.
Numbers like this come from a long, heavy stretch. You reached the end of the questionnaire, and that counts as doing something.
Please see a doctor in the next few days. Not because the number is frightening, but because in this range help works and going it alone mostly doesn’t.
If waiting for an appointment is unbearable, or you’re having thoughts of hurting yourself, the numbers below answer right now, free, around the clock.