The Library · Collection 03
These are the same screening instruments used in clinics and research — not pop quizzes. That cuts both ways: the scores mean something, and they still aren't diagnoses. Every instrument below is a structured way to notice whether something deserves attention, and nothing more.
Depression symptom severity over the past two weeks · 9 items · ~2 min
The standard depression screen in primary care worldwide — released by Pfizer with no permission required, which is part of why it's everywhere. Severity bands at 5, 10, 15, and 20 are well validated, and it's designed for re-taking to track change. Fair warning: item 9 asks directly about thoughts of self-harm.
Generalized anxiety symptom severity over the past two weeks · 7 items · ~1 min
The PHQ-9's anxiety companion, from the same team with the same open licensing. The standard generalized-anxiety screen, and reasonably good at flagging panic and social anxiety worth following up on, even though it wasn't built for them specifically.
General psychological distress over the past 30 days · 10 items · ~2 min
When you want an overall distress dial rather than a disorder-specific screen. Used in national mental-health surveys in the US and Australia, so population benchmarks actually exist. The 6-item version loses surprisingly little.
Lifetime manic or hypomanic symptoms · 15 items · ~5 min
The standard first-pass screen for bipolar-spectrum symptoms. Know its limits: in general-population use, most positive screens are not bipolar disorder — it casts a deliberately wide net, and borderline traits, ADHD, and plain temperament can all trip it. A positive result means 'worth a professional conversation,' nothing more.
The absence of symptoms is not the presence of wellbeing — these measure the positive half directly.
Current subjective wellbeing (positively worded) · 5 items · ~1 min
Five cheerful items about the past two weeks — no symptom language at all — used in 30+ languages. Low scores are a validated cue to screen further for depression, which makes it a gentle front door to the heavier instruments above. Copyright now sits with the WHO under a Creative Commons license.
Global life satisfaction — your own judgment, your own criteria · 5 items · ~1 min
Diener's five-item classic, one of the most used scales in all of psychology: stable enough to mean something, sensitive enough to move when life actually changes. His site also hosts the 8-item Flourishing Scale for a broader read on meaning, engagement, and relationships — both free with attribution.
Seligman's five wellbeing pillars: Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment · 23 items · ~5 min
A profile view of wellbeing rather than a single number, which is its charm. The psychometric caveat is that the five pillars correlate heavily with each other and with life satisfaction, so treat the profile as descriptive texture rather than five separate validated constructs. Free from co-author Peggy Kern's site.
How uncontrollable and overloaded life has felt over the past month · 10 items · ~3 min
Cohen's scale is the standard for perceived stress — deliberately not a clinical instrument, which is its virtue: it measures the thing that sits between life events and symptoms. Free for personal and non-commercial use.
Burnout in three domains: personal, work-related, and client-related · 19 items · ~5 min
The best free alternative to the proprietary MBI, validated across occupations and countries. Separating where the exhaustion comes from is more actionable than a single burnout score. The Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI) is another validated free option, with an exhaustion/disengagement split instead.
Emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced accomplishment · 22 items · ~10 min
The instrument that defined burnout research and still anchors it. It's proprietary through Mind Garden, and for personal use there's little reason to pay when the CBI exists — listed so you know what the literature is usually citing.
Global sleep quality over the past month · 19 items · ~5 min
The standard sleep-quality instrument: seven component scores (quality, latency, duration, efficiency, disturbances, medication, daytime dysfunction) rolled into a global score. Free for non-commercial use with no modifications permitted. Its recall window is a full month — so it's a monthly instrument; re-taking it weekly just re-samples overlapping memories.
Insomnia severity and its daytime impact, past two weeks · 7 items · ~2 min
Morin's brief index is the standard outcome measure in insomnia treatment research — sensitive to change, with well-validated cutoffs. If the PSQI is the monthly census, this is the quick pulse check.
Daytime sleepiness — how likely you are to doze in eight situations · 8 items · ~2 min
The standard daytime-sleepiness measure, from Murray Johns, whose official site hosts it (free for individual use, licensed for everything else). Complements the PSQI: bad nights and sleepy days are related but distinct problems.
Obstructive sleep apnea risk · 8 items · ~1 min
Designed for pre-surgical screening and now the standard quick apnea screen. Half the items are demographics (BMI, age, neck circumference, gender), so it's part risk calculator, part symptom scale — and worth a minute if you snore, wake unrefreshed, or someone has watched you stop breathing at night.
Alcohol consumption pattern, dependence signs, and harms · 10 items · ~2 min
The WHO's screen, with decades of validation across cultures — the standard by a wide margin. The 3-item AUDIT-C (just the consumption questions) is what most health systems use for routine screening. The official site has an interactive version and the full manual.
Drug-use consequences over the past 12 months (excludes alcohol) · 10 items · ~2 min
The standard brief drug-involvement screen, mirroring the AUDIT's role. For cannabis specifically, the 8-item CUDIT-R is the validated dedicated screen and worth using instead if that's the actual question.
Adult ADHD symptoms mapped to DSM criteria · 18 items · ~5 min (6-item Part A does most of the work)
Developed with the WHO; the standard adult screen, and the six Part A items alone perform nearly as well as the full 18. One honest caveat: attention complaints are transdiagnostic — poor sleep, anxiety, and depression all elevate scores — so a positive screen is a flag for proper assessment, not an answer.
Autistic traits in adults of average or above intelligence · 50 items · ~10 min
Baron-Cohen's research screen from the Cambridge Autism Research Centre. It measures traits, not diagnosis: scores above the research cutoff are common in the general population (famously in STEM fields), and self-report of one's own social cognition has inherent limits. The RAADS-R, popular on autism-community sites, has weaker specificity evidence than its online popularity suggests — the AQ plus a professional assessment remains the defensible path.
Quick PTSD screen following any lifetime trauma exposure · 5 yes/no items · ~1 min
The VA's primary-care screen: five yes/no questions, with three or more yeses indicating follow-up is warranted. Free from the National Center for PTSD, which maintains the definitive collection of trauma measures.
DSM-5 PTSD symptom severity, anchored to a specific event · 20 items · ~5–10 min
The standard self-report severity measure, designed for re-taking to track change through treatment. It asks you to anchor on your worst event and rate symptoms against it — a heavier sitting than anything else on this page, so pick your moment.
OCD symptom dimensions: washing, checking, ordering, obsessing, hoarding, neutralizing · 18 items · ~5 min
The standard brief OCD self-report, free for personal and research use. The subscale profile matters more than the total — and note that hoarding has since become its own DSM diagnosis, so that subscale reads differently than it did in 2002.
Quick screen for anorexia- and bulimia-spectrum problems · 5 yes/no items · ~1 min
Five memorable clinical questions; two or more yeses means the topic deserves a real conversation. Good sensitivity for anorexia and bulimia, less studied for binge-eating patterns. It's a doorway, not a measure.
Disordered-eating attitudes and behaviors · 26 items · ~5 min
The most widely used eating-attitudes screen, descended from the original EAT-40. Garner's official site offers it free with attribution, including scoring and referral guidance at the validated cutoff.
Subjective loneliness — the gap between wanted and actual connection · 20 items · ~5 min
The standard loneliness measure since 1978, deliberately written without the word 'lonely' — which matters, given how much stigma distorts direct self-report. The 3-item short version is what large surveys use when brevity wins.
A different beast from everything above: these are performance tasks, not questionnaires. Two caveats before any of them mean anything. Practice effects: your first several sessions improve for reasons that have nothing to do with your brain changing. Timing noise: browsers and devices add variance that can swamp small real differences. Single scores mean little; trends under consistent conditions mean something. (The popular reaction-time leaderboard sites are entertainment, not measurement.)
Sustained attention and vigilance via reaction time · 3-minute sessions
The psychomotor vigilance task is the workhorse of fatigue science — it's what astronauts use to track alertness, because it's nearly immune to learning effects after the first few sessions. NASA's free iOS app implements the validated 3-minute PVT-B protocol.
Classic cognitive paradigms: Stroop, N-back, Corsi blocks, trail making, and dozens more · varies by task
An academic platform for building and running real experiments, whose demo library lets you run the classics in your browser — with documentation and citations for each paradigm. Browser timing caveats apply, but as a way to actually experience the tasks the cognition literature is built on, nothing else comes close for free.
Early cognitive impairment screening, designed for older adults · ~15 min · pen and paper
Ohio State's printable self-administered screen, validated against full clinical assessment, with four interchangeable forms so it can be re-taken. Built to be brought to your doctor, not self-interpreted — which is the right frame for any cognitive screen on this list.