Validity of the patient health questionnaire-2 (PHQ-2) for the detection of depression in primary care in Colombia

•The Patient Health Questionnaire-2 (PHQ-2) was tested in a Colombian sample.•The gold standard was the MINI interview.•The PHQ-2 demonstrates acceptable psychometric performance.•We recommended to consider screening tests with better indicators. The PHQ-2 is a screening test for major depressive disorder (MDD) derived from PHQ-9, which has shown to be useful in the detection of cases of clinical significance in previous studies. The psychometric properties of PHQ-2 in the Colombian population are unknown. PHQ-2 were assessed in 243 patients in general medical consultations using the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI) as the gold standard. Internal consistency, convergent validity and criterion validity were calculated by analyzing the Receptor Operating Characteristics (ROC) and the area under the curve (AUC). Cronbach's alpha and McDonald's omega coefficients were 0.71. Spearman's rho coefficients for correlations with PHQ-9 and HADS-D scores were 0.63 and 0.59 (p