Holmes-Rahe Stress Scale
Tick every life event you have experienced in the past 12 months. Each carries a published Life Change Unit weight from Holmes and Rahe's 1967 Social Readjustment Rating Scale — the total estimates how much readjustment you are absorbing.
A screening tool from 1967, not a clinical diagnosis. The risk percentages are population-level associations from the original study, not predictions about you. If you are struggling, please speak with a healthcare professional.
How this is calculated
This is the Social Readjustment Rating Scale exactly as published. Each of the 43 life events carries a fixed Life Change Unit weight derived by Holmes and Rahe from their original rating study, in which hundreds of people judged how much readjustment each event required relative to marriage, anchored at 50. You tick the events from the past twelve months and the weights are summed. Nothing is weighted, scaled or adjusted on top of the published instrument, and the risk bands are the authors' own.
Worked example
Someone who married (50), moved house (20), took on a mortgage (31), changed to a different line of work (36) and took a holiday (13) in the same year scores 150 — the top of the low-risk band, from five events most people would call a good year. That is the scale's central and most counter-intuitive claim: readjustment is demanding whether or not the change was welcome. Add one unwelcome event — a major personal illness (53) — and the total reaches 203, well into the moderate band.
Limitations
The weights come from a 1960s American sample and some items have aged — the original item was a "mortgage over $10,000". It counts welcome and unwelcome events alike, and takes no account of how much control, warning or support you had, which later life-events research treats as central. It is also not a measure of how stressed you feel: for that, use the Perceived Stress Scale. The risk percentages are population-level associations from the original cohort, not predictions about an individual. One further caveat on the numbers themselves: published reproductions of the scale differ by a single point on the mortgage item (31 vs 32); this tool uses 31, the value in reproductions citing the 1967 paper directly.
Sources
- Holmes TH, Rahe RH. The Social Readjustment Rating Scale. Journal of Psychosomatic Research. 1967;11(2):213–218. View source (opens in a new tab) The original paper. Source of all 43 events and their Life Change Unit weights, and of the illness-risk prediction model behind the score bands.
- American Institute of Stress. Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory. View source (opens in a new tab) Distributes the modern inventory and states the interpretation bands used here: 150 or below low, 151–300 roughly 50% risk, above 300 roughly 80%.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Holmes-Rahe stress scale?
The Social Readjustment Rating Scale, published by psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe in 1967, is a list of 43 life events each carrying a weight in "Life Change Units" (LCU). Holmes and Rahe examined the records of over 5,000 patients, then asked hundreds of people to rate how much readjustment each event demanded relative to marriage, which was fixed at 50. Death of a spouse came out highest at 100. You tick the events you have experienced in the past year and add the weights.
How is the Holmes-Rahe score different from the PSS-10?
They measure different things and are frequently confused. Holmes-Rahe counts objective life events over the past year, regardless of how you feel about them — a promotion and a house move both add points even if you enjoyed them. The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) asks how unpredictable, uncontrollable and overloaded your life has felt over the past month. You can score high on one and low on the other. Someone absorbing a marriage, a move and a new job scores high on Holmes-Rahe while feeling fine; someone with no major events can feel severely stressed and score near zero.
What do the score bands mean?
Using Holmes and Rahe's original prediction model: 150 or below indicates a relatively low amount of life change and low susceptibility to stress-related illness; 151 to 300 implies roughly a 50% chance of a significant health problem within two years; above 300 raises that to roughly 80%. These are population-level associations from a 1967 cohort, not predictions about any individual. Treat a high score as a prompt to reduce controllable load, not as a diagnosis.
How reliable is a scale from 1967?
The core finding — that accumulated life change correlates with subsequent illness — has held up across decades of replication, and the SRRS remains one of the most cited instruments in health psychology. Its weaknesses are real, though: the weights come from a 1960s American sample and some items have aged (the original referred to a "mortgage over $10,000"); it counts positive and negative events alike; and it ignores how much control or support you had. It measures exposure to change, and change is demanding regardless of whether you wanted it.
Put it all together
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