Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5)

The checklist asks about twenty reactions to a stressful experience over the past month: unwanted memories, nightmares and flashbacks; strong distress or physical reactions to reminders; avoiding memories, feelings and reminders; changes in beliefs, mood and closeness to others, such as blame, persistent fear or anger, and feeling cut off; and changes in arousal, such as irritability, risk-taking, hypervigilance, a strong startle reaction, poor concentration and trouble sleeping. Each is rated by how much it has bothered the person, from not at all to extremely.

Weathers and colleagues (2013) revised the earlier PTSD Checklist at the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to match the twenty symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). The items fall into the four symptom clusters of that definition: intrusion, avoidance, negative changes in thinking and mood, and changes in arousal and reactivity. Blevins and colleagues (2015) described its development and early evaluation.

The twenty ratings are summed into a total that indicates overall symptom severity, and cluster scores show which kinds of reaction are most prominent. Lower totals indicate few or mild reactions over the past month; higher totals indicate frequent and distressing ones. A high score suggests probable posttraumatic stress and is a reason for a careful clinical interview; it is not a diagnosis on its own.

The checklist is used to screen for posttraumatic stress in health and veterans' services, to monitor symptom change across trauma-focused treatment, and widely in research. On this site, the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES-II) describes dissociative experiences that can accompany trauma, the PHQ-9 and GAD-7 describe co-occurring depression and anxiety, and the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) measures overall distress.

Strong convergent and discriminant validity; the published cutoff optimizes diagnostic agreement with the CAPS-5 (Bovin et al., 2016).

“Repeated, disturbing, and unwanted memories of the stressful experience?”

Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.

Item responses are summed to a total score and compared against published screening cutoffs.

The report explains which published screening bands your score falls in and what they mean.