Trauma, PTSD and dissociation
PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5)
PTSD symptom severity monitoring; no automated diagnosis.
Reference information · Questionnaire
- Last content update
- 2026-10-26
- Clinical review
- Not independently reviewed
- Source jurisdiction
- See individual sources
- Coverage
- Questionnaire
| Field | Instrument context |
|---|---|
| Version | Standard past-month form; cover version 29 August 2023 |
| Population | Adults; interpretation by qualified health professionals. |
| Respondent | self |
| Recall period | Past month |
| Purpose | PTSD symptom severity monitoring; no automated diagnosis. |
Assessment tool
A total does not establish individual item responses.
Below is a list of problems that people sometimes have in response to a very stressful experience. Keeping your worst event in mind, please read each problem carefully and then select one of the numbers to the right to indicate how much you have been bothered by that problem in the past month.
Responses stay in this page’s memory. Reset or leave the page to clear them. No patient identifiers are collected.
Interpretation & limitations
- Higher totals reflect greater PTSD symptom severity. VA describes population- and purpose-dependent screening thresholds around 31–33; this implementation does not choose a universal cutoff or generate a diagnosis. Trauma exposure is assessed separately for this form.
References · 2
- VA PCL-5 description, scoring and public-domain notice · VA National Center for PTSD explicitly identifies PCL-5 as public domain and not copyrighted; intended for qualified professionals/researchers.
- VA official PCL-5 past-month form