General Mental Illness Test (p Factor)

In traditional clinical classification, psychiatric disorders were treated as completely distinct boxes. However, extensive clinical research revealed that individuals who experience one mental health condition frequently develop others over their lifetimes. In 2014, Avshalom Caspi, Terrie Moffitt, and their colleagues analyzed the long-running Dunedin study, which followed the same people across 20 years, from adolescence to midlife. They found that psychiatric difficulties were best captured not by isolated categories, but by a single overarching dimension: the general factor of psychopathology, or the p factor, analogous to general intelligence. The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology, developed by Roman Kotov and colleagues in 2017, organizes mental illness as a hierarchy, from a few broad spectra down to specific symptoms. This test applies that model with 36 statements, six for each of six conditions, taken word for word from six of our longer tests.

This assessment explores that shared structure across six core areas of psychological experience. Autism reflects neurodevelopmental traits such as sensory sensitivity, repetitive movements, literal language, and avoiding eye contact. Psychosis covers unusual perceptual experiences, unreality, and feeling that others are plotting against you. Schizoid tendencies describe interpersonal detachment, emotional reserve, and a preference for solitude. Obsessive-compulsive traits capture distressing intrusive thoughts alongside repetitive checking, washing, or cleaning rituals. Attention-deficit signs involve restlessness, distractibility, trouble focusing, and impulsive speech. Finally, psychopathic traits reflect interpersonal antagonism, marked by callousness, egocentric goals, and an inclination toward manipulating others.

Each of these six conditions is a spectrum of human variation, and reporting some of its signs does not mean you have it. Every score is given as a percentile among takers: the 73rd percentile means you scored higher than about 73% of the visitors who took that test. The test combines your answers into a general mental illness score, weighting each condition by how strongly it shares the general factor, and names your most pronounced condition: the one at your highest percentile, so a condition most people agree with does not win by default. If none of your conditions reaches the 50th percentile, the result says so. It is a tendency, not a label.

Caspi and colleagues found that people with higher p scores had more life impairment, greater familiality (mental illness in their families), worse developmental histories and more compromised early-life brain function. The p factor also helps explain why causes, biomarkers and treatments specific to a single diagnosis have been hard to find. Michelini and colleagues reviewed studies finding that autism and ADHD features, too, are largely captured by the p factor. Counting them does not make autism or ADHD illnesses: it reflects that their signs often occur together with the signs of other conditions. Your overall score is a weighted average of your six condition scores. The weights come from our own answer data: among visitors who took two of the six source tests, every pair of conditions was positively related, some only weakly, and one general factor stood out above the rest. Psychosis and autism were most strongly tied to that factor, then OCD and ADHD, then schizoid and psychopathic traits, and the weights follow that order.

The takers your scores are compared with are visitors to this site who took the six full tests between July and October 2026. Everyone who takes one of those tests chose it, and people who suspect a condition take its test more often. To even this out, each condition’s percentiles come only from visitors who reached its test from another of the six, the same kind of visitor for every condition. No one took all six tests, so the percentile of your overall score is a model-based estimate: it combines the six conditions’ score distributions with how strongly each pair goes together. These takers likely still score higher than the general population would, so a percentile here ranks you among takers, not among people in general. Each statement in this test comes from one of our longer tests: the Autism Spectrum, Psychosis Spectrum, Schizoid Personality Spectrum, OCD/OCPD Spectrum, ADHD Spectrum and Psychopathy Spectrum Tests. Each of those measures one condition in depth, with 27 to 50 statements; this test takes the six that best capture each condition’s core signs. The Mental Illness Test (HiTOP-BR) scores the broad HiTOP spectra themselves; this test scores six named conditions and points to the one that stands out. If one condition stands out for you, its full test gives a more detailed picture.

This test is provided for educational and self-reflection purposes only and is not a diagnostic instrument. A high score on any condition, or overall, is not a diagnosis of autism, psychosis, schizoid personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or psychopathy; only a qualified professional can make one, and the DSM-5 of the American Psychiatric Association sets the criteria. The test is based on the p factor research of Caspi and colleagues and on HiTOP, and its statements come from six of our longer tests; it is not affiliated with Caspi, Moffitt, Kotov, Michelini, Levenson or their institutions. If these tendencies cause you distress or get in the way of daily life, consider talking to a qualified mental health professional.

References

• Caspi, A., Houts, R. M., Belsky, D. W., Goldman-Mellor, S. J., Harrington, H., Israel, S., Meier, M. H., Ramrakha, S., Shalev, I., Poulton, R., & Moffitt, T. E. (2014). The p Factor: One General Psychopathology Factor in the Structure of Psychiatric Disorders? Clinical Psychological Science, 2(2), 119-137.
• Kotov, R., Krueger, R. F., Watson, D., Achenbach, T. M., Althoff, R. R., Bagby, R. M., Brown, T. A., Carpenter, W. T., Caspi, A., Clark, L. A., Eaton, N. R., Forbes, M. K., Forbush, K. T., Goldberg, D., Hasin, D., Hyman, S. E., Ivanova, M. Y., Lynam, D. R., Markon, K., . . . Zimmerman, M. (2017). The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP): A dimensional alternative to traditional nosologies. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 126(4), 454-477.
• Michelini, G., Carlisi, C. O., Eaton, N. R., Elison, J. T., Haltigan, J. D., Kotov, R., Krueger, R. F., Latzman, R. D., Li, J. J., Levin‐Aspenson, H. F., Salum, G. A., South, S. C., Stanton, K., Waldman, I. D., & Wilson, S. (2024). Where do neurodevelopmental conditions fit in transdiagnostic psychiatric frameworks? Incorporating a new neurodevelopmental spectrum. World Psychiatry, 23(3), 333-357.
• Levenson, M. R., Kiehl, K. A., & Fitzpatrick, C. M. (1995). Assessing psychopathic attributes in a noninstitutionalized population. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(1), 151-158.
• American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.). American Psychiatric Association.

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