The PTSD checklist is public domain, and the agency that wrote it says the gold standard is an interview
The PCL-5 was written by VA National Center for PTSD staff and is not copyrighted. Its founding paper was in college students. The VA gives a cutoff of 31 to 33 for probable PTSD and says diagnosis needs a structured interview.
We have not finished checking this source. No judgement either way. how we score evidence
Caveat on this rating: The founding validation is in students; later work in veterans and clinical samples exists and is not summarised here. The cutoff range is the VA's, with its own caveat that population and purpose change it.
Significant findings
The PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 is the twenty-item form that gates most PTSD treatment decisions in the United States. The VA's National Center for PTSD says on its own page: "This measure was developed by staff at VA's National Center for PTSD and is in the public domain and not copyrighted."
The founding psychometric paper examined it in two studies of trauma-exposed college students, 278 and 558 people, reporting strong internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Not veterans, and not patients.
The VA's guidance on reading a score is unusually plain. A cutoff "between 31-33 is indicative of probable PTSD across samples", but "because the population and the purpose of the screening may warrant different cutoff scores, users are encouraged to consider both of these factors." And: "The gold standard for diagnosing PTSD is a structured clinical interview such as the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS-5)."
Worth asking
This is the model of how a screen should be labelled: free, public, with the cutoff's limits and the diagnostic standard printed beside it. If a PCL-5 score was treated as a diagnosis, the agency that wrote the form disagrees.
Source
The Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5): Development and Initial Psychometric Evaluation — Blevins CA, Weathers FW, Davis MT, Witte TK, Domino JL (2015)
Read the source: https://doi.org/10.1002/jts.22059
DOI: 10.1002/jts.22059
How this was scored
- Study design
- not recorded
- Funding
- not recorded
- Published in
- not recorded
- Sample size
- not recorded
- Preregistered
- not recorded
- Conflicts disclosed
- not recorded
- Independent of proponent
- not recorded
- Retracted
- No
We have not finished checking this source, so there is no scoring to show yet. “We have not checked this yet” and “this is disputed” are different statements, so no scored band is shown rather than a low one.
Read the full scoring rubric, including what it can't tell you.
Published September 17, 2026.
Questions
How strong is the evidence behind this?
veisund rates this source "not yet assessed". We have not finished checking this source. No judgement either way. One caveat travels with that badge: The founding validation is in students; later work in veterans and clinical samples exists and is not summarised here. The cutoff range is the VA's, with its own caveat that population and purpose change it. The score is calculated from recorded facts about the source — study design, funding, publication venue, sample size, preregistration — not typed in by an editor.
What is the source for this?
The Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5): Development and Initial Psychometric Evaluation — Blevins CA, Weathers FW, Davis MT, Witte TK, Domino JL (2015). DOI: 10.1002/jts.22059. The full source is linked on this page so you can read it yourself.
Is this medical advice?
This is information to bring to your prescriber, not medical advice and not a reason to change anything on your own. Nothing here is an instruction to stop or reduce a medication. If you are in crisis, call or text 988.
This is information to bring to your prescriber, not medical advice and not a reason to change anything on your own. Nothing here is an instruction to stop or reduce a medication. If you are in crisis, call or text 988.