The Malaise Inventory developed by Rutter and his colleagues has been widely used to measure the level of stress experienced by mothers of disabled children. The results obtained using the inventory in a survey of 362 mothers with a disabled child are assessed for internal consistency. The reliability of the malaise scale is estimated. There was no case for dropping any items from the inventory or for applying weights to the items. However, a single dimension of emotional disturbance underlying the set of malaise items did not emerge. This finding may pose problems when the Malaise Inventory is used to test empirical hypotheses about the degree of stress.