Autistic Burnout State Screener - ABSI-24

A free twenty-four-question check-in on your energy, sensory load, masking fatigue and stamina over the past two weeks. It takes five to seven minutes. Higher scores indicate more autistic burnout right now.

This one measures your current state, not your long-term tendency. Your report is private and sent to you by email.

State or trait: which of the two burnout screeners to take

There are two burnout screeners on this site and they answer different questions. The difference is the time window.

This one - the ABSI-24 - asks about the last two weeks. Am I in burnout right now? How depleted am I today, this week, this fortnight? It is the one to take if something has changed recently, if you have just come out of an intense period, or if you want a reading you can repeat in a month to see whether anything is moving.

The ABTI-24 trait screener asks about the last year. How exposed am I to burnout in general? What is my masking load, my accumulated strain, and my access to real recovery over time? It is the one to take if you want to understand the pattern rather than the moment.

The two answer differently for the same person, and the gap between them is informative. A low state score with a high trait score means you are currently all right but living in conditions that will eventually cost you. A high state score with a low trait score usually points to a specific recent event rather than a structural problem. Both high is the clearest signal that something needs to change rather than be endured.

What autistic burnout is

Autistic burnout is a state of chronic exhaustion, loss of skills and reduced tolerance to sensory and social input, arising when demands exceed capacity over a sustained period. It typically lasts months rather than days and does not resolve with a weekend off.

It is regularly mistaken for depression, including by clinicians, and the mistake matters because the usual advice for depression - more activity, more structure, more social contact - is close to the opposite of what burnout needs. Burnout is a capacity problem. Adding demand to a system already past its limit takes it further past.

What this questionnaire measures

Twenty-four items across four areas, each scored separately.

Energy and exhaustion - scored 7 to 35

Seven items on depletion: how much you have available, how quickly it runs out, and whether rest is putting anything back. In burnout the distinctive feature is that sleep and time off stop being restorative - you rest and wake up no further ahead.

Regression - scored 5 to 25

Five items on skill loss: abilities that were reliably available becoming unavailable. Speech becoming effortful or dropping away. Executive function collapsing, so cooking, answering a message or leaving the house becomes genuinely impossible rather than merely unappealing.

This is the area that frightens people most and the one they are least likely to know has a name. It is documented, it is common in autistic burnout, and it is not permanent.

Masking - scored 5 to 25

Five items on the cost of masking right now - how much effort presenting as something other than yourself is currently taking, and whether it is still working. Masking failing is itself a burnout signal: the capacity that ran it automatically for years has gone.

If you want to look at camouflaging on its own terms, the CAT-Q measures it across three dimensions.

Sensory-social - scored 7 to 35

Seven items on tolerance. In burnout the sensory and social threshold drops sharply: noise, light, texture and touch that were manageable become intolerable, and social contact that used to be enjoyable starts costing more than it returns. A narrowing threshold is often the earliest reliable sign, arriving before exhaustion is obvious.

How it is scored

Your total runs from 24 to 120, plus a score for each of the four areas.

Minimal burnout - 24 to 47

Little current depletion. Worth checking the trait screener anyway if the conditions you live in are demanding.

Moderate burnout - 48 to 83

Real depletion, at the level where changes made now are most effective, because the ground has not yet been lost.

Severe burnout - 84 to 120

Substantial current burnout. Worth treating as a priority rather than something to get through.

Within the areas, energy and sensory-social each run mild at 7 to 13, moderate at 14 to 24 and severe at 25 to 35. Regression and masking each run mild at 5 to 9, moderate at 10 to 17 and severe at 18 to 25.

Why the two-week window matters

Because it makes the score repeatable. A state measure taken once is a snapshot; taken every few weeks it becomes a trend, and a trend is the thing that tells you whether what you have changed is working.

That is worth knowing before you take it, because recovery from autistic burnout is usually measured in months. A second reading four weeks after a genuine reduction in demand may show only a small movement, and a small movement in the right direction is the normal shape of it rather than a sign that nothing is working.

If your score is high

A high score does not mean something is wrong with you. It reflects how much you have been carrying, in conditions that have probably not been built with you in mind.

What helps is consistently described in the same terms by researchers and by autistic people themselves, and they are not the terms most people expect:

• Fewer demands, genuinely and for long enough to matter - not better time management.
• Less masking, somewhere it is safe to drop it.
• Low-input time. Sensory recovery is the mechanism by which tolerance comes back, not an indulgence.
• Access to deep interests, which restore rather than distract.
• Accommodations that lower the baseline load, so recovery is not immediately spent again on return.
• Time, in months rather than days.

If your day-to-day functioning has dropped in a way that is hard to manage, or things feel unmanageable, please speak with a qualified clinician rather than working through it alone.

About this questionnaire

Autistic burnout is a real and increasingly well-described phenomenon - the foundational research, led by Dora Raymaker and colleagues and published in 2020, was built directly from autistic people’s own accounts. It is not a formal diagnosis, and there is as yet no single standardised clinical instrument for measuring it.

This questionnaire is a structured check-in built around four areas the burnout literature consistently identifies. Read your result as a map of where you currently are, not as a measurement against an established norm.

What this screener is not

This assessment is for information and self-reflection only. It is not a diagnostic tool and does not replace professional medical or psychological advice. It cannot tell you whether you are autistic, and it cannot separate burnout from depression, chronic illness, or the aftermath of a period of prolonged stress - all of which it may partly be picking up.

What happens after you finish

You receive your total, all four area scores and a report by email. Nothing is shared with anyone unless you ask us to send it somewhere. If you would like to talk the result through, you can tell us at the end and we will follow up.

Working with us

If burnout is the immediate problem, the most useful thing we do is often not an assessment but accommodations documentation, which is what actually changes the load at work or in study.

We also provide adult autism assessment, ADHD assessment and dual assessment for both, with add-on evaluations for alexithymia and demand avoidance.

You can also meet the clinicians, read our frequently asked questions, or browse the rest of our free tools on the self-discovery page.

About Adult Autism Assessment

We assess and support neurodivergent adults - people seeking a first diagnosis in adulthood, people who have known for years and want documentation, and people who are still working out what fits. Our approach is neurodiversity-affirming: an assessment here is about accurate self-understanding and practical accommodation, not about finding out what is wrong with you.

Adult Autism Assessment is part of New Path Family of Therapy Centers, Inc.