This type of hero never fails the "Leave Your Quest" Test. Someone with Chronic Hero Syndrome who travels from place to place is a Knight Errant. When it's because the victim is female, the diagnosis is The Dulcinea Effect. If they get paid for this kind of work, it's We Help the Helpless. Also contrast with Chronic Villainy and Changing of the Guard. The exact opposites of this are Bystander Syndrome and True Neutral. Self-Care Epiphany is when they realize that they do need to take care of themselves and not put in too much possibly unnecessary work to help others.
A related disorder is Samaritan Syndrome, where the hero bemoans that their duties leave them no free time for their personal affairs. Small Steps Heroes tend to suffer from this. No matter their personal situation, they're always willing to stop and help. The characters are just too darn heroic to leave people to suffer, so time to go wander around in caves for a while. This is extremely common in video games as a way to make the player deal with plot threads like Fetch Quests when they should have more important things on their minds. Interestingly enough, as Don Quixote lampshades, this syndrome was noticed by Chivalric Romance writers and they devised a temporary cure: The Damsel Errant must simply ask the hero not to engage in any other adventure until he has finished hers. Their predictable heroism also makes them particularly prone to manipulation by certain devious villains, often earning a quip from them that their heroism makes them weak. If they aren't smart about their heroism, and they have a tendency to intervene without getting the whole picture, then they're liable to just make things worse. Maybe they simply like being in the line of danger. A particularly bad case of this may develop into a full-blown Martyr Without a Cause. Spending so much time and effort saving everyone else can also put a strain on the hero's personal or dating life.
Such heroes could wear themselves out in their attempts to help everyone or become distraught and blame themselves for the one time that they're unable to save the day. While certainly admirable, this may have a few negative side-effects on the hero and those around them. Chronic Hero Syndrome is an "affliction" of cleaner heroes where for them, every wrong within earshot must be righted, and everyone in need must be helped, preferably by Our Hero themselves.
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