PTSD Checklist (PCL-5) Screening Test
The VA's 20-question PCL-5 trauma screening checklist. How much has a stressful experience bothered you in the past month, on a scale from 0 to 4?
20 questions
6 min
Instructions
Below is a list of problems that people sometimes have in response to a very stressful experience. Keeping your worst or most stressful experience in mind, read each problem carefully and choose the number that indicates how much you have been bothered by it IN THE PAST MONTH.PCL-5 is a public-domain U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs instrument (National Center for PTSD, Weathers et al., 2013). The 20 official items, 0-4 response scale, and DSM-5 cluster structure are reproduced unchanged; no permission required for use with attribution.
Citations
- Weathers, F. W., Litz, B. T., Keane, T. M., Palmieri, P. A., Marx, B. P., & Schnurr, P. P. (2013). The PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5). Scale available from the National Center for PTSD at www.ptsd.va.gov. Official instrument; public domain u.s. government work
- Weathers, F. W., et al. (2018). The PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5): Development and initial psychometric evaluation. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 31(5), 544-551. Psychometric evaluation; total score and cluster based provisional rule