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 records the ten ratings in the clinician completion view. Lirena does not send Y-BOCS to the client.
- 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
How much of your time is occupied by obsessive thoughts?
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
Ten items are rated from 0 to 4, giving a total from 0 to 40 with obsession and compulsion subtotals from 0 to 20 (Goodman and colleagues, 1989). Storch and colleagues (2015) benchmarks: 0-13 mild, 14-25 moderate, 26-34 moderate-severe and 35-40 severe symptoms.
References
- Original Y-BOCS paperGoodman WK et al. The Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1989;46(11):1006-1011.
- Y-BOCS severity benchmarksStorch EA et al. Defining clinical severity in adults with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Compr Psychiatry. 2015;63:30-35.
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.