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The Association Between PHQ-9 and Fitness for Work Among Depressive Patients
Oren Zack1, Iris Strul, Noa Segal
1Medical Corps, Occupational Health Branch, Israel Defense Forces (Dr Zack); Division of Environmental and Occupational Health, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, School of Public Health, Tel-Aviv (Dr Zack, Dr Moshe); Occupational Medicine Department, Maccabi Healthcare Services, Rishon Letzion (Dr Strul, Dr Eden, Dr Moshe); Occupational Medicine Department, Clalit Health Services, Netanya (Dr Segal); Department of Occupational Medicine, Clalit Health Services, Jerusalem District (Dr Rinsky-Halivni); Family Medicine Department, Braun School of Public Health, Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical School, Jerusalem (Dr Zack, Dr Strul, Dr Segal, Dr Eden, Dr Rinsky-Halivni, Dr Moshe), Israel.
Objective:
One of the tools to assess depression severity is the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9). Our aim was to investigate the correlation between PHQ-9 scores and fitness for work (FFW) in major depressive disorder (MDD).
Methods:
A cross-sectional study in patients who were evaluated for their FFW and later compared with PHQ-9.
Results:
Questionnaires were collected for 125 patients. A negative correlation between depression severity and absolute working ability (WA) was found for both women (β = -0.4, P < 0.001) and men (β = -0.4, P = 0.05). Multivariate linear regression revealed a negative correlation between WA and depression severity based on PHQ-9 scores (β = -0.4, P < 0.05).
Conclusions:
A negative correlation exists between absolute and relative WA and depression severity, meaning, with the higher severity of depression the lower the WA.
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