Free tool · about 3 minutes
Burnout, or depression?
They produce almost identical days from the inside — flat, tired, short-tempered, nothing landing. They respond to very different things, which is why the distinction is worth making early rather than after a year of treating one as the other.
Question 1 of 7
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The one question that separates them
Does it travel with you? Burnout is bound to a context. Take somebody genuinely away from the source for long enough and it eases measurably, and the parts of life that have nothing to do with the pressure are usually still intact. Depression comes along. The week away lifts one of these noticeably and leaves the other roughly where it was.
That is not a perfect test and it is not offered as one. Plenty of people cannot remember their last genuine break, which makes the question unanswerable rather than answered — and that is its own finding. Burnout left running long enough also tends to become depression, so the two coexist more often than either is described alone.
Why getting it wrong costs time
Burnout responds to changing the conditions producing it. Treating it as an individual pathology — as a failure to cope with something that is genuinely unreasonable — tends to make people feel worse rather than better, because it locates the fault in the person rather than in the load.
Depression does not resolve by fixing the job. Waiting for the workload to change is one of the most common ways people lose a year, because the thing they are waiting on was never the cause. The longer read is burnout vs depression; if work is the source, stress leave in BC covers what is actually available, and high-functioning anxiety covers the version nobody around you can see.
What this is not
Not a screening instrument, not validated, and not a diagnosis. It has no score, and a tool that produced one would be read as a verdict however it were captioned. A Registered Clinical Counsellor does not diagnose in any case — where a formal diagnosis is what you need, that is a physician, psychiatrist or registered psychologist, and the assessment routes in BC page sets out how to get one. Nothing you enter here is stored or sent anywhere.
Common questions
Does this tell me which one I have?
No, and anything that claimed to would be lying to you. It has no score and reaches no verdict. What it does is show you which pattern your own answers lean toward and explain what separates the two, so that if you do speak to someone you are starting from a clearer description rather than from "I am exhausted".
What actually separates burnout from depression?
Mostly whether it travels. Burnout is bound to a context — it eases measurably when you are genuinely away from the source, and the enjoyment of things outside that context is usually intact. Depression comes with you. A fortnight away lifts one of them noticeably and leaves the other largely where it was, which is the cleanest distinguishing test most people already have data on.
Why does the difference matter if both feel the same?
Because what helps differs. Burnout responds to changing the load and the conditions producing it, and treating it as an individual pathology tends to make people feel worse for failing to cope with something unreasonable. Depression does not resolve by fixing the job, and treating it as a workload problem delays help. Getting the frame right early saves months.
Is anything stored?
No. It runs entirely in your browser, nothing is sent anywhere, and closing the tab discards it. There is no sign-up and no email box at the end.
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