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| Score | Band | Common cue | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| {{ band.rangeLabel }} | {{ band.label }} | {{ band.cueLabel }} | {{ band.statusText }} |
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These clusters help organize review conversations. They are not official PHQ-15 subscales.
These are the items currently carrying the most weight in the total score.
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No item scored above "Not bothered at all," so no symptom driver stands out in this run.
This chart places the current total on the 0 to 30 PHQ-15 scale and adds the standard 5, 10, and 15 cut points, plus your optional prior score.
This chart ranks item-level scores from highest to lowest so the main contributors to the total score are visible at a glance.
| # | Item | Response | Score | Interpretation | Copy |
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| {{ row.id }} | {{ row.text }} | {{ row.answer }} | {{ row.scoreText }} | {{ row.interpretation }} |
The JSON record keeps the scored summary, common screening cues, tool-made pattern grouping, and per-item responses in one portable export.
Somatic symptom burden is a practical way to describe how strongly physical symptoms have been bothering someone over a recent period. The PHQ-15 turns that question into a structured check so a vague sense of "I have not felt right" becomes a score you can review, repeat, and discuss.
This package asks all fifteen PHQ-15 items with the standard three-point bother scale for the past two weeks. When the last answer is entered, it totals the result, places it in a severity band, organizes the responses into symptom clusters, and highlights items that may deserve quicker follow-up.
That makes it useful for more than one kind of user. Someone preparing for a medical visit can use it to summarize a difficult symptom picture. Someone already being evaluated can use it again later and compare the overall burden rather than relying on memory alone.
A realistic example is a person whose score is driven by headaches, low energy, trouble sleeping, and palpitations. The total score tells you how heavy the burden looks overall, while the cluster breakdown shows which part of the symptom picture is doing the most work inside that total.
The screen is not a diagnosis and it does not overrule urgent symptoms. Low scores can still sit alongside chest pain, fainting, or shortness of breath that need prompt medical attention, and higher scores still need clinical context before they are treated as evidence of one specific disorder.
The most reliable way to use the PHQ-15 is to keep the recall window steady. Answer each item for the same past-two-weeks period and use the response choices consistently. If one run reflects the last few bad days and another reflects a calmer fortnight, the comparison will look more precise than it really is.
The tool is strongest as a structured symptom snapshot. It is good at showing overall burden, which items were rated Bothered a lot, and which cluster currently has the highest share of the score. It is not meant to determine the cause of symptoms, separate medical from psychological explanations, or replace an examination.
Read the output in this order: total score, severity band, highlighted symptom drivers, and then the cluster summary. That order matters because the PHQ-15 was built around the total score. The cluster cards in this package are helpful interpretation aids, but they are an extra layer added by the app rather than an official PHQ-15 subscale system.
The answers table and export buttons are useful when you want a clean record for a clinician, counselor, or your own follow-up notes. They are less useful when the main problem is urgent symptom triage. If a response set includes chest pain, fainting, or breathlessness rated at the highest bother level, treat the score as secondary to getting appropriate medical guidance.
For repeat use, compare like with like. Run the screen after similar intervals, keep the same interpretation habits, and pay attention to whether the dominant cluster changed as well as whether the total score moved.
The scoring core is straightforward. Each of the fifteen items accepts 0 for Not bothered at all, 1 for Bothered a little, or 2 for Bothered a lot. The package sums those values directly, producing a total from 0 to 30.
The severity bands in the interface follow the familiar PHQ-15 cut points at 5, 10, and 15. This package labels 0 to 4 as Minimal, 5 to 9 as Low, 10 to 14 as Medium, and 15 to 30 as High. The gauge chart, headline badge, and export summaries all reflect that same mapping.
The cluster analysis is package-specific. The code groups items into five buckets: musculoskeletal and pain, gastrointestinal, cardiopulmonary and autonomic, fatigue and sleep, and reproductive and sexual health. Those buckets are useful for pattern reading, but they should be understood as an editorial layer built on top of the standard PHQ-15 total rather than a separate validated scoring system.
High-intensity item review is also explicit in the code. Any item scored as 2 is surfaced as a driver, and several items trigger stronger guidance when rated at that level: chest pain, fainting spells, heart pounding or racing, shortness of breath, menstrual concerns, and pain during sexual intercourse. Those warnings are there to slow down self-interpretation when symptoms may need more direct care.
Scoring happens in the browser, but the session state is still portable. The responses are encoded into a fifteen-character string made of 0, 1, 2, and - so an unfinished or completed run can be restored from the page state. That means copied exports are optional, but it also means a shared link or browser history entry can reproduce sensitive answers.
| Band | Score range | How to read it here |
|---|---|---|
| Minimal | 0 to 4 | Low current symptom burden, but not a guarantee that every symptom is trivial. |
| Low | 5 to 9 | Noticeable burden worth watching, especially if a few items are concentrated in one cluster. |
| Medium | 10 to 14 | Clinically meaningful burden that usually warrants a fuller review. |
| High | 15 to 30 | Substantial burden where evaluation and follow-up become more urgent. |
| Cluster | Items used by this package | Maximum cluster score | Purpose in the output |
|---|---|---|---|
| Musculoskeletal & pain | 2, 3, 5 | 6 | Surfaces spine, limb, joint, and headache burden. |
| Gastrointestinal | 1, 12, 13 | 6 | Shows how much digestive discomfort contributes to the total. |
| Cardiopulmonary & autonomic | 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 | 10 | Groups chest, dizziness, fainting, palpitations, and breathlessness. |
| Fatigue & sleep | 14, 15 | 4 | Captures exhaustion and sleep disruption as a combined pattern. |
| Reproductive & sexual health | 4, 11 | 4 | Keeps menstrual and sexual-pain items visible without mixing them into other groups. |
Not bothered at all instead of leaving it unanswered.The total score is the anchor, but it is not the only thing worth reading. The best interpretation combines the band, the dominant cluster, the high-intensity items, and any alert text generated by specific symptoms.
When the result feels clinically important, the most useful next step is usually to bring the score and the specific high-scoring items into a real conversation with a clinician rather than relying on the band label alone.
If most items are scored 0 but chest pain is scored 2 and dizziness is scored 1, the total may still stay in the low range. The package will show a modest overall score while also surfacing chest pain as a high-intensity driver and including stronger wording about prompt care if the symptom is new or worsening. That is exactly the kind of case where the total must not be read in isolation.
Consider a run where low energy and trouble sleeping are both scored 2, headaches are scored 1, back pain is scored 1, and several other items are scored 0. The total may land in the medium band even though only one cluster is clearly dominant. In that situation the output helps separate a broad symptom load from a narrower fatigue-and-sleep pattern that deserves targeted follow-up.
When pain, digestive complaints, palpitations, and exhaustion are all rated strongly, the score can move into the high band without one cluster owning the entire picture. The app will still identify the leading cluster, but the more important story may be that burden is distributed across several symptom areas. That can be useful context when someone is deciding what to document before an appointment.
No. It summarizes self-reported symptom burden with the PHQ-15 scoring frame. Diagnosis still requires clinical history, examination, and context that the questionnaire does not capture.
No. The total score and its cut points are the main PHQ-15 result. The five clusters in this package are an added interpretation layer to help users spot where symptoms are concentrated.
The app scores in the browser and does not send answers to a dedicated scoring backend, but the response pattern is encoded into the page state so a copied link or browser history entry can reproduce it. Treat shared URLs and exported files as sensitive.
The package waits until all fifteen items are answered. If the summary has not appeared, look at the progress bar and the checklist to find any unanswered symptom items.
Bothered a lot, which the package highlights because it may deserve closer follow-up.