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The Y-BOCS is the dominant clinician-administered OCD severity measure. It’s the standard outcome in OCD treatment trials, ERP outcome research, and pharmacotherapy decisions for treatment-resistant cases. You fill it about the client after a structured interview. The client never sees the form.

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What it measures

Ten items, scored separately for obsessions and compulsions:
  • Obsessions (items 1-5): time spent, interference, distress, resistance, control
  • Compulsions (items 6-10): time spent, interference, distress, resistance, control
Each item scores 0-4. Total range is 0-40.

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When to use it

  • OCD severity tracking — the primary outcome in CBT-ERP and SSRI treatment trials
  • ERP (Exposure-Response Prevention) treatment-response measurement
  • Tic-related OCD differential — often paired with the YGTSS in pediatric and young-adult patients (roughly half of Tourette’s cases carry comorbid OCD)
  • Treatment-resistant OCD decision-making — clomipramine, augmentation, deep TMS, gamma knife capsulotomy

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How you fill it

Solo fill. Open Templates, pick Y-BOCS, tap New response. The renderer presents the 10 items in two groups (Obsessions / Compulsions) with a header between them for visual chunking. Typical administration is 20-30 minutes with the rater manual. The form never goes to the client. The server rejects sent_async delivery — Y-BOCS is psychometrically a structured interview, not a self-report.

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How Rivet scores it

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Total + subscales

  • Total: sum of all 10 items, 0-40
  • Obsessions subscale: sum of items 1-5, 0-20
  • Compulsions subscale: sum of items 6-10, 0-20

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Severity bands (Goodman et al. 1989)

TotalBand
0-7Subclinical
8-15Mild OCD
16-23Moderate OCD
24-31Severe OCD
32-40Extreme OCD

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Clinical change thresholds

  • Response: ≥35% reduction in total from baseline (Pallanti 2002 international consensus)
  • Remission: total ≤12 sustained

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Rater training

The Y-BOCS Rater Manual (Goodman et al., distributed by UPMC Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic) provides scoring anchors and probe questions. Reliability with trained raters typically reaches ICC 0.85+.

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What we render vs. the source

Verbatim Goodman 1989 items with the published severity anchors in the choice display text. The 10 items are presented in two groups (Obsessions / Compulsions) with a section header in the Rivet renderer. The Y-BOCS Symptom Checklist — the separate ~65-item lifetime symptom inventory that distinguishes obsession content (contamination, aggressive, sexual, hoarding, religious, somatic, ordering, miscellaneous) from compulsion form (cleaning, checking, repeating, counting, ordering, hoarding, miscellaneous) — is a separate template and is not part of the 10-item severity scale.

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Citations

  • 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. Free clinical use per UPMC Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic.
  • Pallanti, S., Hollander, E., Bienstock, C., et al. (2002). “Treatment non-response in OCD: methodological issues and operational definitions.” International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, 5(2): 181-191.

YGTSS

Yale Global Tic Severity Scale. Frequently paired with Y-BOCS in Tourette’s and tic-related OCD presentations.

Clinician-administered overview

Why these six measures don’t ship to clients, and how solo fill works.