OCD Test for Teens & Adults: the Y-BOCS Explained
Ten ratings covering how much time obsessions and compulsions take, how much distress they cause, and how hard they are to resist. A clinician asks the questions in conversation and rates the answers from what they hear.
- 10 severity ratings
- Teens and adults
- Clinician-administered
What counts as an obsession or a compulsion?
An intrusive thought is not a wish. A compulsion can be silent and mental. Ordinary worries and habits are not OCD. Sorting those apart is the first thing a clinician does, and it changes what the scale is rating.
Read the two-minute explainer →Available through care
This questionnaire is published by OCD Scales, LLC, and we don't publish it here. If it is relevant to your child's care, your Emora clinician may use it as part of their assessment.
Find OCD carePublic version of the questionnaire is available from the publisher.
What a Y-BOCS score can and cannot tell you
The Y-BOCS is a clinician-administered severity interview for obsessive-compulsive symptoms in teens and adults.
A clinician asks these questions in conversation, checks what counts as an obsession or a compulsion, and rates severity from the interview.
Wherever it is used, a rating scale is a screen, not a diagnosis. A clinician reads it alongside a history, an interview, and often a second rater such as a teacher or the other parent before drawing any conclusion.
About the Y-BOCS
The Y-BOCS (Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale) is the measure clinicians and researchers use most often to rate how severe obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms are. Ten ratings cover the two halves of OCD: obsessions, the intrusive thoughts, and compulsions, the rituals and repeated behaviors. Each rating asks how much time they take out of the day, how much they get in the way, how much distress they cause, and how hard they are to resist.
Severity bands run from subclinical through mild, moderate, severe, and extreme. The scale assumes the symptoms are there and measures how severe they are. That makes it the standard way to track whether treatment is working. It does not diagnose OCD, and it cannot tell you whether what you are experiencing is OCD in the first place.
The Y-BOCS is asked, not filled in. A clinician agrees what counts as an obsession or a compulsion before rating anything, so we do not publish it as a form to complete alone. OCD responds well to the right treatment, especially exposure and response prevention (ERP), a form of cognitive behavioral therapy built around practicing facing your triggers. We offer online therapy for children and teens with licensed clinicians who treat OCD, usually within days of sign-up.
How the Y-BOCS is scored
Ten ratings add up to one total, read against bands that run from subclinical to extreme. Five ratings cover obsessions and five cover compulsions. Each one asks about a different thing: time taken, interference, distress, resistance, and control.
The scale measures how severe symptoms are. It does not establish whether they are obsessive-compulsive disorder in the first place. A clinician asks the questions in conversation, after agreeing what counts as an obsession or a compulsion. Treatment studies judge whether someone has responded by how far the score drops, which is why clinicians repeat it rather than run it once.
Common questions
No. The Y-BOCS is a clinician-administered interview, so a version filled in alone would not carry the meaning the ratings are built for. We do not publish it here; it is available from its publisher, OCD Scales, LLC.
Each of the ten ratings is scored on a five-point scale and added into a total, read against bands running from subclinical through mild, moderate, severe and extreme. Clinicians usually repeat it during treatment, because the change in the number is more informative than any single reading.
Yes, the CY-BOCS, worded for children and teens and with room for a parent to contribute. For a younger child, an evaluation with a clinician is the right starting point.
Exposure and response prevention (ERP), a form of CBT, has the strongest evidence, sometimes alongside medication. Most people with OCD improve substantially with proper treatment.
References
- Goodman, W. K., Price, L. H., Rasmussen, S. A., Mazure, C., Fleischmann, R. L., Hill, C. L., Heninger, G. R., & Charney, D. S. (1989). The Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale: I. Development, use, and reliability. Archives of General Psychiatry, 46(11), 1006-1011. https://doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.1989.01810110048007 Official source
- Goodman, W. K., Price, L. H., Rasmussen, S. A., Mazure, C., Delgado, P., Heninger, G. R., & Charney, D. S. (1989). The Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale: II. Validity. Archives of General Psychiatry, 46(11), 1012-1016. https://doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.1989.01810110054008
Y-BOCS, OCD Scales, LLC.
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