Assessing somatic symptom burden: A psychometric comparison of the Patient Health Questionnaire—15 (PHQ-15) and the Somatic Symptom Scale—8 (SSS-8)

Assessing physical symptoms during the postpartum period: reliability and validity of the primary health questionnaire somatic symptom subscale (PHQ-15)

“…However, we found no difference in mental health-related QoL based on symptom severity, which is inconsistent with previous studies [14,16,18]. This may be because This may be due to anxiety about physical symptoms and/or health generally, which is transferred onto the baby.…”

“…Women with high levels of symptoms reported significantly worse overall physical health, poorer physical health-related QoL, and increased primary care usage. This is consistent with earlier studies indicating an association between the PHQ-15 and physical healthrelated QoL and increased healthcare usage [10,14,16,18]. A new finding was that high symptom severity was also associated with overall physical health ratings.…”

“…Initial results indicated symptom severity as measured by the PHQ-15 was linked to lower functional health and both increased healthcare usage and disability days. The PHQ-15 has a number of advantages in that it is widely used [11][12][13], is considered reliable and valid for general [14,15] and clinical populations [11,[16][17][18], has been translated into several languages [12-15, 17, 18], and has been widely implemented in healthcare. It also includes items that assess the severity of the most common symptoms in postpartum women including tiredness and musculoskeletal problems [3,5], as well as symptoms associated with poor self-rated health such as headache, stomach pain, nausea and musculoskeletal problems [19].…”

“…Whilst subsequent studies have confirmed the suitability of the PHQ-15 in other clinical populations [11,[16][17][18], evidence of the reliability and convergent validity of the PHQ-15 for use with postpartum women still needs to be confirmed as "symptoms can result from normal physiological changes in pregnancy and the early post-partum period, so therefore need to be assessed with care." (p. 384) [20].…”

Psychological and interactional characteristics of patients with somatoform disorders: Validation of the Somatic Symptoms Experiences Questionnaire (SSEQ) in a clinical psychosomatic population

“…Whereas the number and severity of somatic symptoms can be assessed by the well validated Patient Health Questionnaire-15 (PHQ-15; 7-9), or its new brief version, the Somatic Symptom Scale-8 (SSS-8, 10,11), different psychological characteristics of patients with a somatoform disorder can be measured with other instruments [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] -e.g., health anxiety with the Whiteley Index [20]. Thus far, however, no instrument has been specifically developed to assess attribution, emotional features, cognitions, illness behavior, and interactional aspects simultaneously for patients with somatoform complaints.…”