Indonesian Patient Health Questionnaire's Clinical Utility in Psychiatric Outpatients: Ruling Out Conditions per ICD-11 Criteria

Abstract

This study aimed to assess the diagnostic accuracy of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ) for identifying common mental disorders in an outpatient clinical psychologist office setting in Indonesia. A total of 661 outpatients from a clinical psychology office in Jakarta, Indonesia, participated in the study. The complete PHQ was administered, and its results were compared with diagnoses made by clinical psychologists based on ICD-11 criteria, including somatoform disorder (n = 6), depression (n = 117), Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD, n = 50), panic disorder (n = 42), bulimia nervosa (n = 2), binge eating disorder (n = 2), and other diagnoses such as OCD and BPD (n = 442). Receiver operating characteristics were computed to examine cut-off points, and optimal cut-off points based on the Youden Index were identified for somatoform disorder (PHQ-15 ≥ 13), depression (PHQ-9 ≥ 13), GAD (GAD- 7 ≥ 10), and panic disorder (PHQ-PD ≥ 7). Cut-off points for the alcohol abuse and eating disorder modules of the PHQ could not be determined due to a lack of sample, and AUC was suboptimal for PHQ-9, GAD-7, and PHQ-ED. The Indonesian PHQ demonstrated good sensitivity but low specificity in identifying somatoform disorder, depression, GAD, and panic disorders based on ICD-11 criteria among Indonesian clinical psychologist office outpatients. In the Indonesian outpatient psychiatric context, the utility of the Indonesian PHQ appeared to be most effective in ruling out diagnoses.