CTQ

The Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) is a 28-item self-report measure developed by David Bernstein to retrospectively assess five types of childhood maltreatment: emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, and physical neglect. Each subscale contains 5 items rated 1–5 (never true to very often true), with total scores from 25 to 125 (excluding 3 minimization/denial items). The CTQ is widely used in psychedelic PTSD research as a baseline moderator variable to characterize participants’ trauma histories and test whether childhood trauma severity influences treatment response. In MDMA-assisted therapy trials for PTSD, CTQ scores help researchers understand how early-life adversity may interact with treatment outcomes. The CTQ has strong psychometric properties (α = 0.91 total) and is one of the most widely validated measures of childhood maltreatment, translated into over 20 languages.