Mental Illness Test (HiTOP-BR)

Traditional psychiatric classification systems sort mental health conditions into separate, binary categories: either someone meets the diagnostic threshold for a specific disorder, or they do not. In clinical reality, however, psychological problems exist along continuous spectrums, and individuals frequently experience overlapping symptoms from multiple areas at the same time. The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) was created by an international consortium of leading clinical researchers to address these limitations. By analyzing how symptoms naturally cluster together in large populations, HiTOP organizes psychological difficulties into a clear, dimensional hierarchy where everyone sits somewhere along each spectrum.

The HiTOP Brief Report (HiTOP-BR) is a validated 45-item screening measure developed by the HiTOP Society to assess an individual across six fundamental spectra of psychopathology. Rather than assigning a single diagnostic label, the instrument provides a comprehensive profile across the full range of psychological functioning, helping to clarify both distinct vulnerabilities and broader patterns of distress.

This test reports your scores across all six primary spectra. Mood and Anxiety (the HiTOP Internalizing spectrum) captures worry, persistent tension, low assertiveness, unstable mood, and intrusive memories. Body Symptoms (the Somatoform spectrum) covers unexplained physical pains, health anxiety, and intense bodily monitoring. Detachment measures a strong preference for solitude and little interest in romantic or close interpersonal relationships. Odd Perceptions (the Thought Disorder spectrum) reflects unusual sensory experiences, feelings of unreality or detachment from one's body, and difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality. Impulsivity (the Disinhibition spectrum) describes disorganization, acting without thinking, and difficulty managing deadlines or spending. Finally, Antagonism captures interpersonal friction, entitlement, deceitfulness, and a drive for control over others.

In the HiTOP framework, these spectra form part of a broader structural hierarchy. At the top of this model sits a general dimension of psychological vulnerability, often called the general factor of psychopathology. Because all six spectra share modest to moderate positive correlations with one another, people who report elevated symptoms in one domain often experience difficulties in others as well. On this test, your Total Symptom Level score is the simple average of your six spectrum scores, an overall snapshot of symptom load. It is not the HiTOP-BR's published general-factor scale: the instrument also defines two secondary scales from overlapping items, a twelve-item general-factor scale and a ten-item Externalizing scale built from Impulsivity and Antagonism items, and this test does not chart either.

Alongside your spectrum results, the chart shows comparison markers on the same 0 to 100 range. They are the published average scores of 780 US adults recruited online and balanced by sex and age, as reported by the HiTOP Society, converted to the chart's scale. Treat them as estimates of typical scores from one sample, not as validated percentiles, clinical cutoffs or severity thresholds.

This assessment is provided for educational and self-reflection purposes only. It is not a clinical assessment, diagnostic tool, or substitute for professional medical or psychological evaluation. High scores point to areas of possible distress worth exploring, not formal diagnoses or character flaws. The items and answer options are those of the published HiTOP-BR, copyright 2024 by the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology Society and licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. This test is independent and not affiliated with the HiTOP Society or its contributing researchers. If you are experiencing significant distress or are in crisis, please reach out to a qualified healthcare professional or your local emergency and crisis support services.

References

• Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology Society. (2024). The HiTOP self-report measures: HiTOP Brief Report (HiTOP-BR). © 2024 Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology Society, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International.
• Simms, L. J., Wright, A. G. C., Cicero, D., Kotov, R., Mullins-Sweatt, S. N., Sellbom, M., Watson, D., Widiger, T. A., & Zimmermann, J. (2021). Development of measures for the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP): A collaborative scale development project. Assessment, 29(1), 3-16.
• Schmitt, J., Volz, M., Benecke, C., Simms, L. J., Kotov, R., Reininghaus, U., & Zimmermann, J. (2026). Validation of the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology Brief Report (HiTOP-BR) in two German-speaking samples. Journal of Personality Assessment, 1-9.