Burnout is a psychological syndrome emerging as a prolonged response to chronic interpersonal stressors on the job. The three key dimensions of this response are an overwhelming exhaustion, feelings of cynicism and detachment from the job, and a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment.
The main coping strategies that have been identified by Lazarus and Folkman (1984) are as follows: confrontation, distancing, self-control, seeking social support, accepting responsibility, escape-avoidance, problem solving, and positive reappraisal.
How Long Does Burnout Last? It takes an average time of three months to a year to recover from burnout. How long your burnout lasts will depend on your level of emotional exhaustion and physical fatigue, as well as if you experience any relapses or periods of stagnant recovery.
Common causes of burnout include: lack of adequate social support; taking on more than one can handle at work, school, or interpersonally with family and friends; and poor self-care. Burnout is a serious matter.
Job burnout risk factors
The following factors may contribute to job burnout: You have a heavy workload and work long hours. You struggle with work-life balance. You work in a helping profession, such as health care. You feel you have little or no control over your work.
If left untreated, burnout can become a part of your everyday life and eventually lead to anxiety or depression. You can also begin to experience chronic mental and physical fatigue that prevents you from working.
Being burned out means feeling empty and mentally exhausted, devoid of motivation, and beyond caring. People experiencing burnout often don't see any hope of positive change in their situations. If excessive stress feels like you're drowning in responsibilities, burnout is a sense of being all dried up.
Younger men, and women aged between 20-35 and 55 years and over are particularly susceptible and should be targeted for programmes to reduce risk of burnout.
For instance, in a review of this research, Kahill (1988) found that burnout often leads to poor physical health, depression, turnover, unproductive work behaviors, proble- matic interpersonal relations, and reduced job satisfaction.
1) Soulful Sufferers: With low agility and low resilience, Soulful Sufferers are the most susceptible to burnout. They have difficulty anticipating changes and when problems occur they are unable to temper their emotional response.
Your brain on burnout
Chronic stress has long been known to contribute to mental and physical diseases, and now researchers are able to capture what happens to the brain. “One of the most striking (effects) is thinning of the gray matter of an area of the brain called the prefrontal cortex,” Arnsten said.
Burnout is when a person reaches a state of total mental, physical and emotional exhaustion and it has some similar signs and symptoms to a nervous breakdown. Your doctor can prescribe medicines for many mental health conditions, and refer you to other healthcare professionals, such as psychologists or psychiatrists.
Others may note an odd change in behavior when this type reaches burnout as they can start to become increasingly irritable, cynical, and uncooperative.
The final stage of burnout is habitual burnout. This means that the symptoms of burnout are so embedded in your life that you are likely to experience a significant ongoing mental, physical or emotional problem, as opposed to occasionally experiencing stress or burnout.
A previous study reported that burnout level reduced with increasing age in men, but the association was bimodal in women, with women aged 20–35 and >55 years showing the highest burnout level (45). When associations are examined by sex, women appear to report higher levels of burnout than that in men (46).
In some instances, employees still report feeling burnout even after one year, and sometimes even after a decade (Cherniss, 1990). Other naturalistic studies suggest recovery takes between one and three years (Bernier, 1998).
Burnout recovery may take as long as three years: A study of coping: Successful recovery from severe burnout and other reactions to severe work-related stress.
“Burnout” is now classified as a mental illness caused by unmanaged stress at work. Many lifestyle factors can be adjusted to help reduce the effects of Burnout such as changing diet, effective supplementation and self-care protocols.