| Score | Where that sits | What it usually means in practice |
|---|---|---|
| 0–2 | Below the cut-point | Fewer of these reactions than the screen looks for. Worth repeating if things change. |
| 3 | Sensitive cut-point | The threshold set to miss as few people as possible. Most clinicians would ask more questions here. |
| 4–5 | Efficient cut-point | The level the validation study called optimally efficient. A fuller assessment is a reasonable next step. |
Free tool · Under a minute · No account, nothing stored
Free PTSD test (PC-PTSD-5)
Five yes-or-no questions, and nobody watching. This is the screen the VA wrote and put in the public domain — the one a primary care clinic runs in under a minute — scored on your own device so your answers never become anybody's data.
- ✓ Free, no email
- ✓ Scored in your browser
- ✓ Analytics off on this page
- ✓ Printable for your appointment
First, the question the screen starts with.
What your PC-PTSD-5 score means
The screen starts by asking whether you have experienced a traumatic event. If you have, five yes-or-no questions follow, so the score runs 0 to 5. These are the thresholds from the instrument's validation work — not verdicts, and not a diagnosis.
A number is not the whole story. Someone can score 2 and still be carrying something that deserves help, and someone can score 5 and be recovering steadily. What the screen is good for is starting a conversation with evidence in hand instead of trying to explain from scratch.
Why this instead of a personality quiz
The PC-PTSD-5 was developed by the National Center for PTSD and published by Prins and colleagues in 2016 after evaluation in a Veteran primary care sample. The VA placed it in the public domain and states plainly that it is not copyrighted — which is why you will meet the same five questions at a VA clinic, a county health center and a community practice. Your number travels with you.
It is deliberately short. A screen that takes forty minutes does not get used; one that takes forty seconds gets asked at an ordinary appointment, which is the point. The trade-off is that it screens rather than diagnoses, and it is tuned to catch people rather than to be certain about them.
And why here rather than a therapy company
Answering questions about the worst thing that ever happened to you, on a page owned by a company that sells therapy, is a reasonable thing to be wary of. The FTC fined BetterHelp $7.8 million in 2023 for sharing intake answers with advertising platforms. This page is built so that cannot happen: no ad pixels, no session recording, no server request, and our own analytics are switched off on this URL. Read the page source and check us — that invitation is the whole point.
Paid for by participating therapists · No ads · Data never sold · Read the full pledge
You have a number. Now what?
Trauma treatment is one of the more specific things a therapist does — the approach matters, and so does asking about it directly:
What EMDR actually is
The most-asked-about trauma therapy, described without the mysticism.
See the real price first
City-by-city fees and every route below sticker, from Medi-Cal to sliding scale.
Use the 10-day rule
California law gives you a non-urgent appointment inside 10 business days. Here are the scripts.
Questions people ask
Is this PTSD test free?
Yes. No account, no email, no paywall, no upsell. TherapyCalifornia is paid for by the California therapists who list in our directory, not by advertisers.
What is the PC-PTSD-5?
The Primary Care PTSD Screen for DSM-5. It is five yes-or-no questions preceded by one question about whether you have experienced a traumatic event. The Department of Veterans Affairs developed it and put it in the public domain; it is used across VA and primary care settings because it takes under a minute.
What score means I might have PTSD?
Three or more is the sensitive cut-point — the level at which clinicians usually look further. Four is what the validation study called optimally efficient, meaning it balances missed cases against false alarms. Neither number is a diagnosis.
Do you store or sell my answers?
No. Every answer is scored by JavaScript running on your own device. Nothing is transmitted, no record is written, and our analytics scripts are switched off on this page entirely, so no session recording or event can observe what you selected.
What if I have not experienced a single obvious event?
Then this screen stops at the first question, and the page says so rather than producing a number. Some of the hardest things people carry are ongoing rather than a single event — neglect, chronic fear, a long illness. Those are real and treatable; this particular questionnaire just is not the right instrument for them.
Does a high score mean I have to talk about what happened?
Not immediately, and not in detail on day one. Trauma-focused therapies are structured, and a good clinician will spend the early sessions on stability and on explaining the approach before anything else. It is a fair question to ask in a first consultation, and it is on the printable sheet this page produces.
Sources
- Prins A, Bovin MJ, Smolenski DJ, et al. The Primary Care PTSD Screen for DSM-5 (PC-PTSD-5): Development and Evaluation Within a Veteran Primary Care Sample. J Gen Intern Med. 2016;31(10):1206–1211.
- U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD. Primary Care PTSD Screen for DSM-5 (PC-PTSD-5) — measure page, which states the screen is in the public domain and not copyrighted, and gives the cut-point guidance used above.
- Federal Trade Commission. FTC to Ban BetterHelp from Revealing Consumers' Data. Press release, March 2023 ($7.8M).
Updated August 2026 · Sources cited above · Education, not diagnosis