BACKGROUND: The Personal Health Questionnaire (PHQ) was developed to screen for depressive disorder in an English speaking population. Its validity in Urdu speaking people of Pakistani family origin living in UK is yet to be established. METHODS: The PHQ was used to screen for depression in a two phase primary care based study of depressive disorder in people of Pakistani family origin residing in Manchester, UK. A proportion of high scorers (PHQ>/=7) and a random selection of low scorers (PHQ 0-6) were interviewed with the Psychiatric Assessment Schedule (PAS) to confirm caseness (ID>/=5). A receiver operator characteristic curve (ROC) analysis was carried out to confirm the optimum threshold value. RESULTS: The PHQ was used to screen 218 subjects with cut off of PHQ>/=7. 46 high scorers and 31 low scorers were interviewed in second stage using PAS. At this threshold PHQ has a sensitivity of 70.4% and specificity of 89.3%. CONCLUSIONS: Findings of this study confirm high sensitivity and specificity of PHQ amongst people of Pakistani family origin. It can be used as a screening instrument to detect depression in Urdu speaking population in UK.