Caregiver Burnout Assessment — Check Your Stress Level

This is an informal self-check. It will not give you a score, and that is deliberate.

A number is only meaningful if it comes from an instrument with a published scoring method and a population it was calibrated against. Plenty of websites will hand you "your burnout score: 68%" from questions nobody validated. That number is decoration.

If you want a properly scored measure, there is a free, validated one you can take today: the Modified Caregiver Strain Index, thirteen questions scored 0-26, published by Thornton and Travis in 2003 and distributed with its scoring instructions by the Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing. We explain it, along with the Zarit Burden Interview and why the Maslach Burnout Inventory is the wrong tool for family carers, on our caregiver burnout scale reference.

What this page offers instead is the thing a score is usually a proxy for: an honest look at the five areas where caring quietly takes its toll, and a practical answer to "what do I actually do about it".

Read each area and answer for the last month, not for today. Caring days vary; a month tells the truth.

1. Exhaustion. Are you tired after sleeping? Do small unexpected problems now feel like large ones? Has "I'll rest when this settles down" been true for more than six months?

2. Your own health. When did you last see a doctor or dentist about something for you? Are there prescriptions you have not collected, appointments you have moved twice, symptoms you have decided not to think about?

3. Withdrawal. Have you stopped replying to people? Turned down invitations more than twice recently? Is there anyone left who you talk to about something other than caring?

4. Money. Are you spending your own money on the person you care for without tracking it? Have you reduced your hours, turned down work, or stopped contributing to a pension? US caregivers spend an average of $7,242 a year of their own money, and the earnings and pension losses are usually far larger — we set the numbers out, with their methods, in the financial cost of caregiving.

5. How you feel about the person you care for. This is the one nobody says out loud. Resentment, irritation, dread before a visit, guilt about the resentment. These are ordinary responses to sustained strain, and they are a signal about your load, not about your character or your love for them.

There is no threshold here. If two or three of these landed, that is worth acting on. If all five did, please treat that as a reason to ask for help this week rather than after the next thing settles down.

Burnout in family caregiving rarely announces itself. It shows up as small, reasonable-looking adaptations that accumulate:

• Shrinking horizons. You stop planning anything more than a week out, because planning feels pointless.
• Vigilance that never switches off. Checking your phone constantly, sleeping lightly, an involuntary jolt whenever it rings. This is the background load that persists on days when nothing at all is wrong.
• Losing the plot of your own life. Hobbies quietly abandoned, friendships thinned by not replying, an identity that has narrowed to one role.
• Efficiency replacing warmth. Visits become task lists. You notice you are managing a person rather than being with them, and you dislike yourself for it.
• Catastrophic patience, then none. Months of endurance ending in a flash of temper that shocks you, then guilt that lasts a week.

None of these is a moral failing and none of them is unusual. AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving's 2025 national study found 63 million Americans providing care — roughly one in four adults — with an average of 27 hours a week, and one in five rating their own health as fair or poor. More context is in our caregiver burnout statistics.

Burnout does not resolve by being noticed. Pick one or two of these and do them within seven days — a small change that actually happens beats a plan that doesn't.

• Book the appointment for yourself. The doctor, the dentist, the thing you have been postponing. Put it in the calendar before you finish reading.
• Ask for a carer's assessment by name. It is a specific, real thing — see the next section. Most carers never ask, because nobody tells them it exists.
• Find out what respite is available where you live before you need it urgently. Respite arranged in a crisis is worse and more expensive than respite arranged in advance. Start with respite care options.
• Give one recurring task to someone else — a sibling, a neighbour, a paid hour. Make it specific and repeating ("Thursday pharmacy run"), because vague offers of help never convert into help.
• Talk to one person who is doing the same thing. Peer contact is the intervention caregivers consistently rate most useful. Online caregiver support groups exist for exactly this.
• Write down what you have spent. Not to feel worse — to have a number when you talk to family, or apply for support you may be eligible for.

For a longer, sequenced version of this, see the caregiver burnout recovery plan.

A questionnaire is not an assessment. In several countries, a carer's assessment is a service you can request by name — separate from any assessment of the person you care for.

• United States. The Eldercare Locator, 1-800-677-1116, connects you to your local Area Agency on Aging, which administers caregiver support programmes and can assess your needs as a caregiver. The Caregiver Action Network (1-855-227-3640) offers free help, and the Alzheimer's Association runs a 24/7 helpline on 800-272-3900.
• England. You have a statutory right to a carer's assessment from your local council under the Care Act 2014, whatever the outcome of the assessment of the person you care for. The Carers UK Helpline is 0808 808 7777.
• Australia. Carer Gateway, 1800 422 737, provides carer support planning, counselling, coaching and respite.

And if things have gone past strain: in the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123; in Australia, Lifeline on 13 11 14. Elsewhere, findahelpline.com lists verified services. Caregivers call these lines. It is what they are for.

Most of what makes caring heavy — the hours, the money, the responsibility, the grief that runs underneath it — is not something an app touches, and we are not going to suggest otherwise.

There is one strand it does touch. A large share of daily caregiver strain is not a task at all: it is the background question of whether the person you care for is okay right now, running all day, on days when nothing is wrong. That is the specific thing a daily check-in answers. They confirm they are okay once a day, you can see it, and if they don't, you are told — with their location.

The daily check-in is free (Try It, $0) on iPhone and Android, anywhere in the world. Automatic alerts to chosen contacts start on Protect Me at $29.99 a year, with location on the move on Protect Me On The Move at $39.99 a year, plus a one-time Stay Connected lifetime upgrade at $4.99. Check-first phone fall detection is iPhone only, on Protect Me and above, off until switched on, and only runs while the app is open; it alerts the person's own trusted contacts, never calls emergency services, and is best-effort rather than a medical device. There is no Android fall detection, and the app interface is currently English only.

It is a safety mechanism, not care and not company. What it changes is how long it takes for someone to notice — nothing more than that, and nothing less.

Two instruments are worth knowing about, and both are described in full on our caregiver burnout scale page:

• The Modified Caregiver Strain Index — 13 items, scored 0-26 across financial, physical, psychological, social and personal domains. Free to use, with published scoring, and the practical choice if you want a number today.
• The Zarit Burden Interview — 22 items scored 0-88, with 12-item and 4-item short forms. The most widely used caregiver burden instrument in the world; licensed, so ask a clinician rather than looking for a copy online.

Our own caregiver burnout self-check is neither of those. It is an informal awareness tool, it has not been validated against any instrument, and its result has no clinical meaning. It is useful for prompting an honest moment, and that is all we claim for it.