Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale
Y-BOCS is a clinician-rated OCD severity scale. This page is for clinics. It is not a self-test and not a diagnosis.
Overview
What is the Y-BOCS?
The Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale rates time, interference, distress, resistance, and control for obsessions and compulsions after interview. Symptom checklists used alongside Y-BOCS are not the same as the severity scale.
Development and clinical use
Goodman and colleagues published Y-BOCS as a clinician rating for treatment studies. Later self-report adaptations exist; they are different instruments and must be named separately.
- Administrator
- Trained clinician
- Mode
- Interview and rating
- Related self-report
- Must be named separately
- Typical use
- Severity monitoring
- Clinical role
- Severity support
- Diagnosis
- Not established by score
Administration
A focused clinician rating
A trained clinician interviews the person and rates official items. Do not send Y-BOCS as an unsupervised public questionnaire without an authorised self-report version.
- One rated item at a time with visible progress
- Keyboard-operable response choices
- Previous, next, and review steps for the rater
- Clear confirmation that the rating is stored for clinic review
The illustration does not reproduce Y-BOCS items.
Report showcase
Designed to make evidence easy to review
The downloadable synthetic example illustrates report layout using invented response patterns, without patient data or instrument questions.
- Named instrument, version, and provenance
- Item-level response pattern without source wording
- Methodology, references, and clinical boundary
- Responsible clinician review rather than automated conclusions
Clinician review required
Methodology
Understand the measure and its scoring conventions
Official manuals describe obsession and compulsion totals. This page does not independently verify scoring or reproduce the checklist.
References
- Original Y-BOCS paperGoodman WK et al. The Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1989;46(11):1006-1011.
Questions
What clinics ask before they evaluate the Y-BOCS
These answers stay inside educational catalogue scope. They do not replace official manuals or clinician judgement.
Is Y-BOCS a questionnaire?
The original Y-BOCS is clinician-rated. Self-report adaptations are different products.
Does Y-BOCS diagnose OCD?
No. It rates severity after a clinician has a working understanding of the symptoms.
Can I complete it here?
No. This landing is educational.
Is OCI-R the same thing?
No. OCI-R is a self-report inventory, not the Y-BOCS severity interview.