Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-5 (CAPS-5)
CAPS is the gold standard for PTSD assessment. The CAPS-5 is a 30-item structured interview that can be used to:
- Make current (past month) diagnosis of PTSD.
- Make lifetime diagnosis of PTSD.
- Assess PTSD symptoms over the past week.
In addition to assessing 20 DSM-5 PTSD symptoms, questions target the onset and duration of symptoms, subjective distress, impact of symptoms on the social and occupational functioning, improvement in symptoms since a previous CAPS administration, overall response validity, overall PTSD severity, and specifications for the dissociative subtype (depersonalization and derealization).
For each symptom, standardized questions and probes are provided. Administration requires identification of the traumatic event to serve as the basis for symptom inquiry. The Life Events Checklist for DSM-5 (LEC-5) is recommended in addition to the criterion A inquiry included in the CAPS-5.
The full interview takes 45‒60 minutes.
CAPS-5 interpretation
CAPS-5 involves assessment of the basic PTSD criteria, rating of functional impairments, clinical assessment of disorder severity and change of the severity during the treatment. Items used in this scale correspond to the diagnostic criteria of PTSD described in DSM-5:
- Criterion А — exposure to traumatic event.
- Criterion B — 5 questions regarding intrusion symptoms.
- Criterion С — 2 questions regarding avoidance symptoms.
- Criterion D — 7 questions regarding negative thoughts and emotions.
- Criterion Е — 6 questions regarding reactivity/arousal.
- Criterion F — duration of symptoms (should be > 1 month).
- Criterion G — the disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in the social, occupational or other important areas of functioning.
To acknowledge PTSD, a patient should have exposure to the traumatic event, 2 or more scores for at least one question of criteria B and C, and 2 or more scores for at least two questions of criteria D and E. The duration of symptoms should be > 1 month. The global ratings are additional to determine the rate of functional impairments, disorder severity, changes during treatment, level of depersonalization and derealization and validity of the results.
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