Clinician-Administered Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Scale

The Clinician-Administered Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Scale (CAPS) is a structured clinical diagnostic interview for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The CAPS was created by researchers at the National Center for PTSD to address several issues with past structured diagnostic interviews for PTSD. The CAPS assesses frequency and intensity of posttraumatic stress symptoms and produces dichotomous data for diagnostic purposes and continuous data for describing symptom severity. The CAPS has recently been updated for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5). The changes include revisions to the PTSD criteria, selection of a single-index traumatic event through administration of the Life Events Checklist, and rating of a single severity score, which encompasses frequency and intensity. This entry introduces the CAPS, describes the structure of ...

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