There is an increased need for efficient, low-cost methods to collect information on a range of widely prevalent mental health outcomes in the general population that can be administered outside of clinical settings. We evaluate the validity of a single-item Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) for assessing the presence and severity of depression and compare its performance with the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) depression scale using a large non-clinical sample (N = 1816) of college students from Switzerland. The VAS scale is strongly correlated with the PHQ-9 total score (0.61) and its 9 individual items (ranging from 0.19 to 0.67). ROC analysis shows that the VAS scale has high accuracy for detecting the presence and different levels (mild to severe) of depression corresponding to PHQ-9 cutoffs. The VAS depression scale represents a simple, easily implementable instrument that is suitable for mental health research in common settings and larger population-based studies.