Trauma Symptom Checklist (TSC-40)
Learn about the Trauma Symptom Checklist created by John Briere, Ph.D. and Marsha Runtz, Ph.D. Download a free PDF template here.
Fact Checked by Ericka Pingol.
.jpg)
What is trauma?
Trauma, in the context of mental health, is what mental healthcare professionals describe as emotional and psychological scars. These scars are left on people in the wake of specific experiences or situations that they’ve gone through. These experiences/situations are often described by those who were in or have witnessed them as overwhelming, distressing, harrowing, and horrifying.
Examples of such experiences and situations include being sexually assaulted, accidentally running over and killing a pedestrian, losing your home to a natural disaster, or being forced to flee your home because of a war.
Trauma makes it difficult for people to cope with what happened to them, and it makes it challenging to work through these experiences and move on. Traumatized people will also likely have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which is a complex mental health problem.
PTSD is characterized by multiple symptoms, with each one varying from person to person. Examples of symptoms include intense feelings of loneliness and sadness, being prone to having nightmares and losing sleep, becoming indifferent and losing interest in many things, gaining the tendency to isolate oneself, and having thoughts of self-harm.
Printable Trauma Symptom Checklist (TSC-40)
Download this Trauma Symptom Checklist (TSC-40) for self-report measure that zooms into symptoms of post-traumatic stress in traumatized patients.
How to use the Trauma Symptom Checklist (TSC-40)
The Trauma Symptom Checklist (TSC-40) is a research tool developed by John Briere, Ph.D. and Marsha Runtz, Ph.D. Its purpose is to act as a self-report measure that zooms into symptoms of post-traumatic stress in traumatized patients as a result of childhood or adult experiences.
It is a 40-item checklist (hence the TSC-40), with each number corresponding to a specific symptom of post-traumatic stress. Please note that it doesn’t cover all symptoms, though.
To use this checklist, researchers must do the following:
- They must gather respondents with trauma/post-traumatic stress.
- They must ask respondents to rate each listed symptom based on how often they’ve experienced each in the last two months/
They can either hand a copy of the checklist to a respondent or recite each symptom to the respondent and indicate their rating. Whichever way they administer this checklist, the respondent must pick a rating between 0 and 3. 0 means “never,” while three means “often.”
Here are examples of items you’d see on this checklist:
- Headaches
- Insomnia
- Weight loss (without dieting)
- Flashbacks (sudden, vivid, distracting memories)
- Spacing out (going away in your mind)
- Trouble controlling your temper
- Uncontrollable crying
- Not feeling rested in the morning
- Desire to physically hurt yourself
- Feeling that you are not always in your body
How is the Trauma Symptom Checklist (TSC-40) scored?
The Trauma Symptom Checklist (TSC-40) is a research tool. It’s not a validated psychological test for diagnosing people with PTSD and treatment planning. While it does have scoring, no score ranges or definitions exist.
The lowest score is 0, and the highest is 120.
This version of the Trauma Symptom Checklist also has six subscales:
- Dissociation (Items 7, 14, 16, 25, 31, 38)
- Anxiety (Items 1, 4, 10, 16, 21, 27, 32, 34, 39)
- Depression (Items 2, 3, 9, 15, 19, 20, 26, 33, 37)
- SATI, or Sexual Abuse Trauma Index (Items 5, 7, 13, 21, 25, 29, 31)
- Sleep Disturbance (Items 2, 8, 13, 19, 22, 28)
- Sexual Problems (Items – 5, 9, 11, 17, 23, 29, 35, 40)
How these are interpreted will depend on the angle of your research.
Trauma Symptom Checklist (TSC-40) example (sample)
Now that you know the basic gist of trauma and PTSD and have learned about what to expect from the Trauma Symptom Checklist (TSC-40), we’d like to show you what the checklist looks like when fully accomplished.
[INSERT SAMPLE TEMPLATE HERE]
We’ve added checkboxes for each item so that you or your respondents can tick the ratings mentioned. We also added small blank fields for you to indicate the total score and the scores for each subscale mentioned earlier.
You can print physical copies if you still prefer having physical copies of the checklist. If you’ve gone paperless, the checkboxes and the blank fields are interactive, so you can record ratings and write the scores on PDF copies.
If you like what you see and believe this checklist will benefit your trauma-related research, feel free to download our free Trauma Symptom Checklist (TSC-40) PDF template.
Download this Trauma Symptom Checklist (TSC-40) Example:
.png)
When is the Trauma Symptom Checklist (TSC-40) used?
When conducting trauma-related research
As mentioned several times, the Trauma Symptom Checklist (TSC-40) by Briere and Runtz is a research tool. If you are conducting trauma-related research, this checklist might be helpful depending on your angle and thesis.
Many research papers, especially from the 90s, have used the Trauma Symptom Checklist (TSC-40) to validate specific angles. If your research can benefit from using the checklist, by all means, use it.
When traumatized people want to understand themselves better
People who agree to become respondents for trauma research can take the opportunity to reflect on themselves based on their traumatic experiences and what they’ve been going through since those unfortunate happenings.
By attending research sessions for trauma and the TSC-40 is used as a way to gather information, they can take a step back and think about how their trauma symptoms affect them, significantly how often they are affected by each one within the past two months (this is the time range indicated by the checklist).
How can Carepatron help with trauma-related work?
Thanks for reading this guide about the Trauma Symptom Checklist (TSC-40) by Briere and Runtz. We hope it acquainted you well enough that you know how to use it. We also hope our template makes it easy for you to collect the ratings and document the scores of your respondents and that the checklist helps validate your research.
While we still have you, we’d like to ask for your time to check more of the Carepatron platform if you haven’t. We have many nifty features, and we’re confident they will convince you to consider us your number-one clinical documentation and psychology practice management software. We won’t discuss these features here, but we’d like to discuss one related to this guide and template: our resource library.
Our resource library is a treasure trove of clinical resources that cover numerous healthcare fields, topics, and practices, especially mental health and trauma.
The Trauma Symptom Checklist (TSC-40) is for research purposes. We also have an abundance of worksheets meant to help patients work through their trauma and move on. If you are a therapist, we have worksheets like the Weekly Gratitude Log, Letter of Gratitude to Yourself, Thinking About Trust, and Spiritual Practices PTSD worksheets.
We even have assessments that assess symptoms of mental health problems like depression and anxiety, which might stem from traumatic experiences, depending on the person being assessed.
What’s great about these resources is that they’re all free! So, read as many guides as you want and download as many templates as you want to help you conduct research, assess mental health problems in patients, and guide your treatment plans!
.png)
Commonly asked questions
No. It is a research tool. It’s not meant to analyze respondents for potential PTSD or anything officially. Under no circumstance should this be used to diagnose people with PTSD.
Tools like the Potential Stressful Events Interview (PSEI), Trauma History Questionnaire (THQ), and Moral Injury and Distress Scale (MIDS) can be used in a comprehensive assessment of a traumatized patient.
You may download this tool and use it to reflect on your experiences and symptoms of trauma and post-traumatic stress, but please make sure not to self-diagnose yourself with PTSD. If you think your scores are concerning, please see a professional so that you can be properly diagnosed and get the treatment you need.
