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On bar exam mental health questions, NCBE's current application contains no question about diagnosis, treatment or counselling, and the three questions in this area are conduct-based. The form itself states that steps taken to address such matters are to your credit. Two things have not gone away.
NCBE's current application contains no question asking about mental health diagnosis, treatment, counselling or psychiatric hospitalisation. The application is conduct-based (https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2026-04/NCBE-Sample-Character-Report-Application_0.pdf).
Three questions sit near this area and all three are framed around conduct rather than status.
Question 28 asks whether, within the past three years, you engaged in any misconduct as a result of consuming alcohol or drugs. Question 29 asks whether, within the past five years, you asserted any medical condition, mental condition, or addiction or misuse of alcohol or drugs as a defence, in mitigation, or as an explanation for your conduct in a proceeding. Question 31 is a traffic-offence question, not a health question.
NCBE's optional questions document, revised July 23, 2026, contains no mental health question at all, so there is no such item for a jurisdiction to switch on (https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2026-04/NCBE-Character-Report-App-Optional-Questions_0.pdf).
QuestionWhat it asksLookbackQ28Misconduct as a result of consuming alcohol or drugsPast three yearsQ29A medical, mental or addiction condition asserted as a defence, in mitigation, or as an explanation for conduct in a proceedingPast five yearsQ31Alcohol or drug related traffic violations, which is an offence question rather than a health questionEverNo questionMental health diagnosis, treatment, counselling or psychiatric hospitalisationNot asked
From NCBE's sample Character Report Application, updated June 4, 2026 (https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2026-04/NCBE-Sample-Character-Report-Application_0.pdf), and its optional questions document, revised July 23, 2026 (https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2026-04/NCBE-Character-Report-App-Optional-Questions_0.pdf). Verified July 27, 2026. Jurisdictions may modify or omit questions, so your own board's form governs.
The application itself addresses this in its own preamble, and the language is worth reading exactly rather than paraphrased.
It states that should your candid responses involve disclosures regarding mental health diagnoses or treatment, substance misuse, or other sensitive matters, be assured that the steps you have taken to address such matters, such as through counselling, treatment, or other actions, is to your credit (https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2026-04/NCBE-Sample-Character-Report-Application_0.pdf).
Several jurisdictions say the same in their own words. New York's questionnaire states that past or present treatment for a condition or impairment is viewed favourably and that applicants who may benefit from treatment are encouraged to seek it (https://www.nybarexam.org/Admission/B-Bar_Admissions-Questionaire.pdf). Texas's 2024 guidelines state that diagnosis or treatment for mental health conditions does not constitute evidence of a lack of present fitness, and that treatment or counselling is encouraged (https://ble.texas.gov/txrulebook).
The change traces to a specific document. The US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division issued a Letter of Findings on February 5, 2014 concerning the Louisiana attorney licensure system, concluding it violated Title II of the ADA (https://archive.ada.gov/louisiana-bar-lof.pdf).
DOJ's stated conclusion was that questions based on an applicant's status as a person with a mental health diagnosis do not serve the goal of identifying unfit applicants, are in fact counterproductive, and violate the standards of applicable civil rights laws.
DOJ also stated what remains permissible: questions designed to disclose the applicant's prior misconduct would serve the legitimate purposes of identifying those unfit to practise, in a non-discriminatory manner.
A settlement agreement effective August 14, 2014 required Louisiana to stop using the pre-February 24, 2014 versions of three NCBE questions, barred conditional admission solely on the basis of mental health diagnosis or treatment, and provided compensation to seven individuals (https://archive.ada.gov/louisiana-supreme-court_sa.htm). NCBE had already revised the form as of February 24, 2014, before the settlement was signed.
The ABA House of Delegates adopted Resolution 102 on August 3, 2015.
Per the ABA's own description, it calls for character and fitness questions to address conduct rather than treatment or diagnoses when inquiring into a bar applicant's mental health history (https://www.americanbar.org/groups/lawyer_assistance/policy/).
Note the framing precisely. The ABA describes refocusing questions onto conduct, which is narrower than saying mental health questions were eliminated. We could not retrieve the verbatim resolved clause, so only the ABA's own paraphrase is quoted here.
A page on this topic is misleading without these, and most pages omit them.
First, records releases can still reach treatment records even where the questions do not. New York's release covers the inspection of documents and records related to treatment for any mental health, drug, alcohol or other substance related condition (https://www.nybarexam.org/Admission/B-Bar_Admissions-Questionaire.pdf). Texas's release is expressly limited to five years of records for specific diagnoses and hospitalisation for the same, but states that the limit does not apply to records relating to chemical dependency (https://ble.texas.gov/txrulebook).
Second, adjudication standards are separate from application questions. Several states' rules still list evidence of mental or emotional instability, or drug or alcohol dependency, among factors warranting further inquiry. Wisconsin's version is narrower and conduct-framed, reaching evidence of conduct due to mental or emotional impairments substantial enough to affect the ability to practise law (https://www.wicourts.gov/sc/rules/chap40.pdf).
Texas narrowed its own rule in the same direction. Rule 6(a)(1)(D) required disclosure of a history of mental illness in the 2014 and 2016 rulebooks; from 2017 onward it reads any history of significant mental illness that is related to a history of misconduct (https://ble.texas.gov/txrulebook).
We make no claim about what Virginia or Connecticut ask. barexam.virginia.gov returned errors on every path and jud.ct.gov was unreachable, so both are not yet verified rather than assumed to match NCBE's form.
Verbatim application text could not be obtained for Illinois, Arizona, Indiana or Texas, all of which render applications through JavaScript-gated viewers that expose only section headings.
Your own jurisdiction is the only authority on your own application. If any of this bears on a decision you are making, read your board's actual form and, if the stakes are real, speak to a lawyer who does bar admissions work or to your jurisdiction's lawyer assistance program.
This page is one spoke of a cluster. The hub is our NextGen bar exam pillar, which carries the whole transition in one place and links every spoke including this one.
The two most closely related pages here are bar application character and fitness questions and bar exam character and fitness.
Everything across the cluster is drawn from the same verified fact set and carries the same verified-as-of date, so the numbers agree with each other by construction rather than by coincidence.
Every fact here was read on NCBE's own pages or the jurisdiction's own board or supreme court pages on July 27, 2026. No prep company, no aggregator, no forum and no news summary was used as a source for anything.
Where a jurisdiction's own site was unreachable, robots-blocked or JavaScript-gated, we say the fact rests on NCBE alone rather than presenting it as confirmed. That happened more often than you would expect and it is named on the page each time.
Where two official sources disagree, we publish the conflict and name which one we treat as operational. We do not pick quietly and we do not average them.
Where nothing is published, the page says not yet published by the board. It never says a number we worked out ourselves, because an estimate that looks like a disclosure is worse than a gap.
It cannot tell you what your own board will do. Jurisdictions set their own dates, fees, cut scores, deadlines and admission rules, and NCBE compiles those decisions rather than making them.
It cannot substitute for reading your jurisdiction's rule text. Compilation charts are an index into the rules, not the rules, and every material decision should be checked against the authority itself.
The first is adoption. Supreme courts issue orders on their own schedule and NCBE's compilation pages lag them, which is exactly what happened with California in July 2026.
The second is the calendar. Most jurisdictions had not posted 2027 dates or 2027 fees at verification, and several were serving prior-cycle pages without saying so.
The third is cut scores. NCBE states on its own page that jurisdictions are currently evaluating its recommended NextGen range (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/minimum-passing-scores), so that list grows month by month.
None of those three settles before autumn. Treat September as the re-check point for anything on this page that carries a date or a number.
Start at NCBE's jurisdiction index (https://www.ncbex.org/jurisdictions) to find the name of your admitting authority, which is often not the state bar association and is sometimes a board sitting under the supreme court.
Then go to that authority's own site and look for a dated page. A page with no cycle label is the warning sign, not the exception; several boards serve prior-cycle information with no year on it anywhere.
Cross-check the deadlines page against the program page, because they disagree more often than they should. We found boards contradicting themselves on dates in the same week.
If the two disagree and you cannot tell which is current, email the board and keep the reply. A dated email from the board is better evidence than any table, including this one.
One framing point that governs this whole page. The first NextGen administration was July 28 and 29, 2026 (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen), so at the time of writing no NextGen exam had been sat anywhere in the world and no results existed. There is no NextGen pass rate, no score distribution, no repeater data and no retrospective on how it went, and anyone offering you one is inventing it.
That matters on this page specifically, because the transition is the reason any of it is moving. Structure, dates and published policy are reportable now; outcomes are not.
NCBE has not published a NextGen mean or standard deviation either. The figures are absent from the Guidance Brief, the Examinees' Guide, the Blueprint and every scoring page (https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2025-11/FOR%20RELEASE%20NCBE%20NextGen%20Guidance%20Brief-Recommended%20Passing%20Score%20Range-2.pdf), which is worth knowing before you read anyone's confident claim about difficulty.
Open your own jurisdiction's board page and confirm every date and number on this page against it.
Where this page says not yet published, check again in September, which is when most boards refresh.
If your plan turns on a figure here, get it from the board in writing rather than from any table.
Everything on this page about mental health questions on the bar application was read on the source pages listed inline on July 27, 2026, and the date is on the page rather than buried in a footer because this material moves faster than anything else we publish.
This section in particular should be re-read against your own board's current form rather than relied on from any summary, including this one.
Re-check your own jurisdiction's board before you rely on any date or number here, including ours. A figure quoted anywhere without a cycle label and a date attached is unverified by definition.
NCBE's current application contains no question about mental health diagnosis, treatment or counselling. Three nearby questions are conduct-framed, covering misconduct from alcohol or drugs, a condition asserted as a defence, and traffic offences.
The application's own preamble states that steps taken to address such matters, such as counselling or treatment, are to your credit. New York and Texas say the same in their own materials.
A February 2014 DOJ Letter of Findings concluded status-based mental health questions violated the ADA. NCBE revised its form as of February 24, 2014, and a settlement effective August 2014 barred Louisiana from using the earlier versions.
Two things persist. Records releases in some states can still reach treatment records, and several states' adjudication rules still list impairment among factors for further inquiry. Check your own board's form and release.
Written by Ali, Georgetown Law, founder of Lovare Institut.
July 30, 2026
July 30, 2026