Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory: Add Up Your Life Change Units From the Past Year
This Holmes-Rahe stress inventory counts how much your life has changed in the past 12 months, using our own 40-event checklist with modern wording and our own weights, scored in the three classic life change unit bands. You get a total, a breakdown by life area, and a plain explanation of what the 1967 research did and did not show, free and instantly, with an optional PDF.
Reviewed byMichael Callans, MSWHolmes-Rahe Stress Inventory (Life Change Units) is a free, confidential 40-question self-assessment, adapted from the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (Holmes & Rahe, 1967) · our own 40-event list and weights. It takes about 4 minutes, runs entirely in your browser, and gives you a plain-language score across 3 interpretation bands plus an optional in-depth report. It is an educational screening, not a diagnosis.
Stress as a count of change, not a feeling
Most stress tests ask how stressed you feel. Holmes and Rahe asked something different in 1967: how much has your life changed recently, good or bad, and how much adjustment did that demand? This inventory keeps that idea, in an adapted and clearly labeled form, and shows you where the load is coming from.
Life events, weighted
Forty events from the past 12 months, each carrying a life change unit weight. Big upheavals such as a death or a divorce count most; everyday shifts such as a change in sleep or a new monthly payment count least, as in the original scale.
The classic bands
Your total is placed in the three bands Holmes and Rahe's later work made famous: under 150, 150 to 299, and 300 or more. We keep the bands and tell you plainly that the illness-risk percentages attached to them in the 1960s and 1970s are dated.
Where the change is coming from
A breakdown across relationships and loss, health and body, work, money and legal matters, and home and daily life, so you can see whether your year was heavy in one area or spread across all of them. This grouping is ours.
| Feature | Typical free quiz | Psychology.com |
|---|---|---|
| Honest about the source | Copies the 1967 list without a rights basis | Our own 40-event list and weights, labeled as ours |
| Modern event wording | 1967 phrasing ('mortgage over $10,000') | Updated, partner-neutral wording |
| Breakdown by life area | No | Yes, four areas |
| Explains the dated illness percentages | Repeats '80% chance of illness' | Keeps the bands, explains the caveat |
| Clinician-reviewed interpretation | Rarely | Yes, clinician reviewed |
| Optional in-depth personalized report | No | Yes, written to your exact scores |
| Answers stay on your device | Often collected | Scored in your browser; only summary scores if you request a PDF or report |
Therapists Who Work With Stress
If your result points to something you want help with, these licensed therapists work with it. Every member is matched to the federal NPI Registry; board checks are dated on the profile.
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Rachael HaylesMS, LPC
License verified, checked Oct 6, 2026
“You’ve been holding it together for everyone else. Therapy can be the space where you finally make room for yourself.”
Houston, Texas Telehealth $120 per session, sliding scale
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Rachel AstarteLMFT, MA, MFA
License verified, checked Oct 19, 2026
“If traditional talk therapy hasn’t worked for you, you’re my people.”
Nyack, New York Telehealth and in person $175 to $300 per session, sliding scale
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License verified, checked Sep 28, 2026
Madison, Wisconsin Telehealth and in person $80 per session
How scoring works
Answers are scored 0–1830 in total. Your result falls into one of 3 bands:
| Score | Band | What it suggests |
|---|---|---|
| 0–149 | Low life change | Your total is under 150 life change units. The past year has asked relatively little adjustment of you, as this inventory measures it. |
| 150–299 | Moderate life change | Your total is between 150 and 299 life change units. The past year has brought a meaningful amount of change, the kind that deserves some deliberate care. |
| 300–1830 | High life change | Your total is 300 life change units or more. The past year has asked a great deal of adjustment of you, and it is reasonable to feel the weight of it. |
How the life change units are scored
The inventory is a checklist of 40 life events, split into three parts by how much adjustment they typically demand. Each event in Part 1 (major upheavals) adds 85 life change units if you tick it, each event in Part 2 (significant changes) adds 50, and each event in Part 3 (everyday shifts) adds 25. The weights are ours. They follow the shape of Holmes and Rahe's original scale, where the death of a spouse anchored the top at 100 and a minor violation of the law sat at the bottom at 11, but the 40 events here are our own writing, in our own order, and none of the original values are used. We say so wherever the numbers appear. The total is the sum of everything you tick, so the maximum is 1,830 and a typical year lands well under 300.
Your total is then placed in the three classic bands: under 150 life change units, 150 to 299, and 300 or more. Those bands come from the research that followed the 1967 paper, which reported that people with higher totals were more likely to report illness over the next one to two years. The breakdown underneath sorts the events you ticked into four life areas. That grouping is ours and is there to show where the load is coming from; it is not a validated subscale.
What the Holmes-Rahe scale is, and what it is not
In 1967 Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe asked several hundred people to rate how much readjustment 43 life events required, using marriage as a fixed reference point. The result was the Social Readjustment Rating Scale, a list of events each carrying a life change unit value. The idea that made it famous was that change itself, pleasant or unpleasant, demands adaptation, and that enough accumulated change in a short period strains the body. Later studies by Rahe and colleagues, including work with US Navy personnel, linked higher totals with more reported illness over the following months, and the three bands with their much-quoted percentages (roughly 'a 50 percent chance of illness' for 150 to 299 and 'about 80 percent' for 300 and over) entered popular culture from there.
Those percentages deserve a caveat. They came from specific samples half a century ago, the associations were modest, and later research found that the meaning a person gives an event, the support around them, and their sense of control matter at least as much as the raw count. A wanted move and a forced one carry the same units on the list but not the same weight in a life. The scale also reflects its era in which events it includes and which it leaves out, which is one reason we wrote our own list rather than reproducing it. Read your total as a rough measure of how much your life has been asking you to adjust, not as a prediction about your health.
This inventory is for adults reflecting on their own past year. It is not a clinical instrument and it does not screen for any disorder; a high total is information about load, not a diagnosis of anything.
Life change, perceived stress, and trauma exposure are three different things
People often reach for a Holmes-Rahe test when what they want to know is how stressed they are. The two questions are related but different. Life change units count what happened to you; perceived stress measures how overwhelmed, out of control or on edge you feel about it. Two people with the same year can score very differently on the second. If your question is 'how stressed am I right now', the Stress Level Test, built on the perceived stress tradition, answers it more directly, and the Burnout Test looks specifically at the work-shaped version.
Trauma exposure is a third thing again. The Holmes-Rahe list treats a death, a job loss and a wedding as points on one scale of adjustment; it does not ask whether anything that happened was frightening, violent, or life-threatening. The Life Events Checklist (LEC-5): Trauma Exposure Screen (the LEC-5) counts exposure to exactly those kinds of events across a whole lifetime and is the right tool if that is your question. If the past year's changes have left you struggling to function, tearful, or not sleeping for more than a few weeks, the Adjustment Disorder Test describes that pattern, and the Resilience Test looks at the resources you have for absorbing change.
What to do with a high total
A total under 150 means the past year has not asked much adjustment of you, which is restful but does not mean you feel fine; feelings have their own measures. A total of 150 to 299 means a meaningfully changed year, and the sensible response is to protect the basics for a while: sleep, movement, food, and the people who steady you, and to avoid adding optional change where you can. A total of 300 or more means a year of heavy adjustment. That is not a verdict on your health, but it is a good reason to be deliberate: keep routine medical appointments, tell your doctor what the year held, notice early signs of strain such as broken sleep or constant irritability, and treat support as maintenance rather than a last resort.
If the events you ticked include a death, a serious illness, a breakup or a loss of work, you may be grieving as well as adjusting, and grief is not a stress-management problem. A counselor or therapist who works with stress and life transitions can help you sort what needs doing from what needs feeling. If you ever find yourself thinking you cannot go on, please call or text 988 in the US any time.
Methodology & sources
This inventory is adapted from the Social Readjustment Rating Scale published by Holmes and Rahe in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research in 1967. The original 43 events and their life change unit values remain under the publisher's copyright, and although several organizations reproduce the scale with permission, Psychology.com has no such permission, so we did not copy it. Instead the event list is our own. We wrote all 40 events ourselves in modern, partner-neutral wording and in our own order, sampling the same life domains the 1967 scale covered (health, family, work, money, home, relationships and loss) and adding several the 1967 list could not have included, such as becoming a caregiver, losing health coverage, a climate or disaster event at home, and online harassment or identity theft. The weights are ours too, three flat tiers (85, 50 and 25 units) by how much adjustment an event typically demands, and none of the original values are used. The three result bands (under 150, 150 to 299, 300 and over) are the thresholds popularized by the follow-up research. The inventory is not validated, and the four-area breakdown is our own grouping.
The evidence behind the approach is real but dated. Holmes and Rahe (1967) established the scale; Rahe, Mahan and Arthur (1970) reported that higher life change totals predicted more reported illness in the months that followed; and later reviews, including Noone (2017) in Occupational Medicine, note both the scale's enduring usefulness as a conversation starter and its limits, in particular that it ignores how a person appraises an event and the support available to them. Cohen, Kamarck and Mermelstein's perceived stress work (1983) is the complement: it measures how stressful life feels rather than how much it has changed, which is why we point readers to the stress level test for that question.
The references document the history and limits of life-event research; they do not validate this adapted inventory or its bands. No online checklist can tell you how your body is coping with change. If a high total coincides with symptoms, a doctor or therapist is the right next step.
References
- Holmes TH, Rahe RH. The Social Readjustment Rating Scale. J Psychosom Res. 1967;11(2):213-218. doi:10.1016/0022-3999(67)90010-4
- Rahe RH, Mahan JL, Arthur RJ. Prediction of near-future health change from subjects' preceding life changes. J Psychosom Res. 1970;14(4):401-406. doi:10.1016/0022-3999(70)90008-5
- Noone PA. The Holmes–Rahe Stress Inventory. Occup Med (Lond). 2017;67(7):581-582. doi:10.1093/occmed/kqx099
- Cohen S, Kamarck T, Mermelstein R. A global measure of perceived stress. J Health Soc Behav. 1983;24(4):385-396. doi:10.2307/2136404
Cite this source
Psychology.com. (2026, October 20). Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory (Life Change Units). Psychology.com. https://psychology.com/tests/holmes-rahe-stress
Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory (Life Change Units) FAQ
What is the Holmes and Rahe stress scale?
It is a 1967 checklist, formally the Social Readjustment Rating Scale, in which 43 life events each carry a 'life change unit' value based on how much adjustment they demand. You tick the events from the past year and add up the units. Later research linked higher totals with more reported illness, which is where the familiar bands of under 150, 150 to 299, and 300 or more come from.
Is this the original 43-item scale?
No. The original list and its weights are under the publisher's copyright, so this page uses our own 40-event list with modern wording and our own weights in three tiers. It keeps the logic and the classic bands and is clearly labeled as an adaptation. Your total is comparable in spirit to the original, not identical to it.
Does a score over 300 mean I will get sick?
No. The often-quoted figures ('80 percent chance of illness') came from specific samples decades ago, the associations were modest, and later research showed that how you appraise an event and the support around you matter at least as much as the count. A high total means your year has demanded a lot of adjustment and that it is worth protecting your sleep, routines and support; it is not a prediction.
How is this different from a stress test?
This inventory counts what has happened to you. A stress test like our stress level test measures how overwhelmed or on edge you feel. Both are useful, and they can disagree: a quiet year can still feel unbearable, and a year of enormous change can be carried well with support. For exposure to frightening or violent events specifically, the Life Events Checklist is the right tool.
Is the test really confidential?
Yes. It runs entirely in your browser. Your individual answers are scored in your browser and are never sent to us or linked to you. They stay in this tab so you can return to your result, and closing or clearing the tab clears them. If you ask us to email the PDF, we receive your summary scores with your email address, never your individual answers. No account is needed.
Should positive events really count?
In this model, yes. Holmes and Rahe's insight was that a wedding, a new baby or a promotion demand readjustment even when they are welcome, and that adjustment has a cost in itself. The weights reflect how much change an event brings, not how unpleasant it is. If the question that matters to you is how the year has felt, the adjustment disorder test and the burnout test look at that side.