Caregiver burnout: straight answers
What's the difference between caregiver burnout and compassion fatigue?
Burnout is deep exhaustion and stress from caring for someone. Compassion fatigue is taking on their emotional stress and trauma. They can happen together.
In Cleveland Clinic’s words:
- Caregiver burnout “is a feeling of deep exhaustion and stress after caring for another person.”
- Compassion fatigue “occurs when a caregiver takes on the emotional stress and trauma of a person within their care. It causes a lack of empathy (understanding the feelings and situations of someone else) or a lack of care for the person within your care.”
“Compassion fatigue and caregiver burnout can happen at the same time.”
What to do with that
Knowing the words can help you describe what you’re feeling, to family or to a professional. Which one you’re feeling, if either, is a question for your own doctor or a mental health professional, not for a checklist.
For both, the help is the same kind: a break, help from family, and someone to talk to.
More questions caregivers ask
- What is caregiver burnout?
- How long does caregiver burnout last?
- Where can a caregiver talk to someone?
- All the caregiver burnout questions
From Centis, a free care notebook you talk to. None of this is medical or legal advice.
Further reading
- Caregiver Burnout (opens in a new tab), from the Cleveland Clinic