As work becomes increasingly important and takes a more prominent place in our lives, more and more people are on the brink of burnout. And all too often these days you hear whispers that this or that person has (temporarily) quit his job to recover from a burnout.
A chronic fatigue syndrome
Burnout is a chronic fatigue syndrome and resembles the undifferentiated somatoform disorder, as stated in the DSM-IV. There is great fatigue that cannot be explained medically and that is not consciously caused. The difference with OSS is that burnout is related to work and OSS applies in general.
Characteristics
- Burned out feeling
- Low energy
- Little motivation
As mentioned, this is all related to work. Burnouts occur after prolonged exposure to a large dose of stress and an overly idealistic attitude (which makes reality disappointing). It is not just about stress and it is not comparable to depression, although the symptoms are somewhat similar. In these cases too, the difference is mainly that a burnout is related to work and must therefore be treated differently.
Maslach and burnout
The term ,burnout, became known mainly in the 1970s by Christina Maslach, an American psychologist (she was an interviewer of the participants in the Stanford Prison experiment). She described burnout as consisting of three phenomena:
- Exhaustion, or extreme fatigue
- Cynicism, or distancing yourself from work and/or colleagues
- Reduced personal competence, decrease in work-related self-confidence
However, reduced work-related self-confidence is doubted as being part of the syndrome.
Maslach also drew up a questionnaire to measure burnout: the Maslach Burnout Inventory. The list contains 20 questions about the three dimensions she drew up (,emotional exhaustion,, ,depersonalization,, and ,personal achievement,).
Examples of questions are:
- Exhaustion : ,I’m frustrated with my job,
- Cynicism : ,I feel like others blame me for their problems,
- Reduced personal competence : ,I deal calmly with emotional problems,
Causes
A burnout often occurs according to a certain step pattern. Initially you have an employee who feels a strong need to prove himself. This concerns ambitious employees who work harder and harder. Working harder is therefore the second step. The increasingly hard-working employee forgets to look at his own needs. He no longer maintains his social contacts, he forgets to sleep and eat: he forgets his own needs. The person does become aware of this and that leads to an internal crisis. Values are revised and problems are denied.
The employee then begins to withdraw and loses touch with himself: depersonalization. Not surprisingly , a feeling of inner emptiness arises, which can result in excessive use of certain substances such as alcohol and food. This is where depression arises, which can be part of a burnout. Ultimately, it results in complete burnout with all the physical and emotional consequences that entails.
Risks
Certain groups appear to be more susceptible to burnout than others. You could mainly think of professional groups that have to perform under high pressure, such as people in healthcare and education. However, it is also possible that this is strongly influenced by the attention paid to these professional groups in this field.
Other risk factors include:
- Age : Older people would be more sensitive, but this could also be because burnout used to result in early retirement benefits
- Gender : Women are said to be more sensitive, but this could also be related to the profession, with more women in healthcare and education
Therapy
Although burnout can cause long-term fatigue, it can be treated relatively quickly. A psychotherapeutic treatment with 12 to 15 sessions, one per week, could be sufficient to make the burnout disappear. Cognitive therapy is used : tackling dysfunctional thoughts, but also looking at the work situation itself. Someone who has to work a lot of overtime will still have a high risk of exhaustion and burnout despite tackling the thoughts, so that also needs to be worked on and a solution found.
Instead of recovering, the main intention is to get the client back to work as quickly as possible. Sometimes this indeed happens during the treatment itself. It therefore appears that postponing work can lead to permanent disability.