Caregiver Burden Score Calculator

The Zarit Burden total is built entirely from the five self-reported strain domains -- personal strain, role strain, time demands, social isolation, and financial stress -- weighted and summed to approximate the validated 12-item short-form ZBI, which by design measures how burdened a caregiver feels rather than how many hours they log. Care hours per week and months caregiving instead feed into a separate burnout-risk score further down the results, alongside patient ADL dependence and access to respite care or a support group, since duration and hour commitment are meaningfully different questions.

The calculator flags a depression-screening recommendation once the burden total exceeds 24 out of 48 -- roughly the midpoint of this calculator's own scale, not a cut point drawn from a specific published study. It is chosen to loosely reflect the well-documented association in the caregiving literature between higher caregiver burden and increased likelihood of clinically significant depressive symptoms. Crossing that threshold doesn't mean depression is present -- it means the score pattern is high enough that a proper clinical screening tool, not this calculator, is warranted.

Support group participation subtracts 5 points from the 0-100 burnout-risk score, while respite care access subtracts a larger 8 points, both applied after the score is built up from the Zarit Burden base, hours committed, caregiving duration, and patient ADL dependence. Respite care's larger effect reflects that it provides direct relief time away from caregiving duties, while a support group offers emotional and informational support without necessarily reducing the caregiver's actual time burden.

No, though they're related -- the Zarit Burden score measures the five self-reported strain domains alone (personal strain, role strain, time demands, social isolation, financial stress), while burnout risk folds in caregiving hours, duration, patient dependency level, and available supports on top of the Zarit base. Someone with a moderate Zarit score but very high weekly hours and no respite care could still land in a higher burnout-risk category than their Zarit score alone would suggest.