Featuring Dr. Daniel Ngui, BSc (P.T), MD, CFPC, FCFP, Family Physician

Duration: 2 minutes, 6 seconds

As a patient, it’s very important that you help partner with your physician to help you.

There are many online questionnaires and tools used, and depending on your physician, depending on you, you may choose different ones. I’ll speak for example about the patient health questionnaire or PHQ-9. This test is used by a lot of physicians to help monitor to diagnose the severity of depression and response to therapy.

Something that you can do as a patient is to use this tool in preparation for your physician’s visit. The challenge with depression is symptoms can change from day-to-day, week-to-week.

It’s very important that you use this tool as a method of monitoring your mood or monitoring your therapy. But if at any time you have a sudden change in your mood, or you feel hopeless, or you think about thoughts of suicide, you seek medical attention right away.

The PHQ-9 can be very helpful for you and your physician to look at your symptoms over two weeks, and also see how often they’re occurring either not at all, several days of the week, or all the days of the week.

This is something that can help you and your physician guide therapy. The benefit of the PHQ-9 is that it’s a great way to start the discussion with your family doctor. Your physician may choose to use this tool or a whole host of tools. There’s no one right one.

Ultimately what happens is, is your family doctor will speak to you and utilize some of the information about the tool to guide therapy whether it be self-management techniques, counseling techniques, or even medications. The most important thing is you speak to your family physician about what treatment options are right for you.

If you have any questions or any concerns, it’s very important that you make an appointment to speak to your physician or local expert. Treatments may vary according to patient and according to physician, so once again, make an appointment and speak to your doctor.

Presenter: Dr. Daniel Ngui, Family Doctor, Vancouver, BC

Local Practitioners: Family Doctor