Article Analysis of 'Are You About to Burn Out at Work?' by Diksha Sahni

Burnout is a gradual onset with symptoms coming on over time slowly. Burnout symptoms may include physical exhaustion, hopelessness, negative self-concept, having difficulty leaving home, and inability to concentrate are just some of the symptoms. Due to the gradual onset of symptoms, it is often hard to detect early (Dass-Brailsford, 2007). In McCann and Pearlman’s article they discuss burnout as a, “psychological strain from working with difficult populations” (McCann & Pearlman, 1990).

Depersonalization occurs when employees become emotionally detached from those around them because of stress with limited or no resources available to assist the employee in coping. One of the biggest contributors to depersonalization is burnout by employees that leads to a decrease in job satisfaction, employee performance, and turnover. Conservation of resources theory (COR) addresses how burnout develops and the effects it has on an employee’s job performance. Burnout often develops because of limited work resources while attempting to keep up with work demands. This addresses the fourth hypothesis where employees with higher levels of depersonalization will more than likely engage

49. Shriom, A. & Melamed, S. Does burnout affect physical health? A review of the evidence. In A.S.G. Antoniou & C.L. Cooper (eds.), Research companion to organizational health psychology (pp.599-622). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2005

All of the definitions of burnout mention the main factor of burnout to be stress. Pamela Patrick, in her book about Health Care Worker Burnout, defined burnout as “the feeling of emotional exhaustion, a negative attitude shift, and a sense of personal devaluation that occurs over time and in relation to high stress work environment”. Whiton Paine in his book on job stress and burnout used the concept of burnout stress syndrome, or BOSS, which is due to “high levels of job stress, personal frustration and inadequate coping skills”.

One of the warrants stated by the authors is that all previous study on the subject has focused on similar claims of why burnout occurs. The authors then list the previous claims for why burnout occurs in this employment sector. This makes it very clear to the reader the

Burnout is a response to job stress that results in a detachment in the worker-client relationship that dehumanizes the client and decreases worker effectiveness. The source of this stress is the interpersonal

Christina Maslach and Susan Jackson are the most well documented researchers on burnout and the most frequently referenced in the literature. Maslach and Jackson (1981) defined burnout as consisting of three component: overwhelming emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishments. The feeling of being overworked/overextended and drained of physical and emotional resources is at the core of emotional exhaustion. Depersonalization refers to a cynical, negative attitude towards people one is interacting with (coworkers, clients, etc.), and excessive detachment and emotional numbing from the various aspects of the job. Feelings of emotional exhaustion subsequently lead to depersonalization. Depersonalization is a protective state of cynicism that spurs dissonance, either cognitive or emotional, with others as a coping strategy for work demands and exhaustion (Halbesleben & Buckley, 2004). Reduced personal accomplishment (also referred to as personal efficacy) refers to the feeling of ineffectiveness, unproductiveness, personal incompetence, and lack of the feeling of accomplishment on the

     Burnout is a direct effect of too much stress. People know if they’re stressed. Stress hormones, like adrenaline, help us react to extreme situations, but if those hormones don’t turn off, they can wear the body down. Symptoms of stress can cause nervousness, fatigue, insomnia, heartburn, headaches, stomach aches, and constipation. Lasting stress increases the risk of heart disease, impairs memory, weakens the immune system, and can accelerate the aging processes.

Burnout affects people both personally and professionally regardless of occupation. In recent years the conception of burnout has been modified, and above all it has begun to be treated as a phenomenon which affects members of many professions not only those of the human service professions, due to burnout is described as a crisis in one’s relationship with work in general (Chirkowska-Smolak & Kleka, 2011). Academicians routinely spend many tiring hours reading, writing, lecturing, and solving countless problems that are sustained by their students and institutions. This level of involvement can be emotionally draining and coupled with working environments that are often highly stressful has the potential to lead to burnout (Maslach et. al, 2001). This emotional involvement is the primary reason of the increasing rate of burnout among academic staff in an educational institution depending on the country’s working conditions (Akgemci et al., 2013). Feelings of emotional exhaustion are a key aspect of the burnout syndrome.

The research that I have chosen correlates burnout and depression. It asks the question, “Is Burnout a Depressive Disorder?” It further reexamines burnout with special focus on atypical depression. Its main purpose is to study the prevalence of depression disorder in workers with burnout while surveying the overlap of burnout with atypical depression. (Bianchi, Schonfeld , & Laurent, 2014) The researchers have derived this problem from researching through previous literature and researches that discuss about burnout, depression and furthermore into atypical depression; in which they have noted that burnout shares key features with atypical depression. (APA, 1994; Quitkin, 2002). In their research, the researchers referenced a study that used more conservative cutoff scores for defining cases of burnout, have found no diagnostically significant difference between burned-out workers and depressed outpatients in terms of reported depressive symptoms. (Bianchi et al. (2013). The author of the study suggested that burnout and depression may, in fact, reflect the same psychopathology. There are other study that the researcher have referenced that further support the finding that burnout share the same similarities as depression. Although they have also deduced that the overlap of burnout and atypical depression has never been investigated in a systematic manner. Thus the need for the study as burnout should be considered a form of depression still remains a controversy

It is evident that the relationship between work stress and mental health has been established by numerous research studies. As discussed in Koesky (1993), the fact that all jobs involve some degree of stress makes it all the more alarming as to the level of stress experienced by individuals working in the human services. That is, given that these individuals are heavily involved in the lives of others, they often develop mental health symptoms that are characteristic of work-related stressors. In fact, “This involvement, which requires caring commitment and empathic responding, places workers at risk for a special type of strain commonly referred to as 'burnout'” (Koesky, 1993, p. 319).

Any work environment can have stressful aspects that can negatively affect the employees’ performance and may lead to burnout. Oftentimes when employees are stressed or burnout their commitment at the job may begin to weaken and they may lose satisfaction. Many organizations have recognized that workers burnout is the result of aggravated chronic work stressors and embodied by enervation and inefficacy. This author will discuss the impact of stress and worker burnout on organizations. Moreover, this author will consider the implication of stress and worker burnout on the employee, as well as the short- and long-term productivity of a business.

Burnout may include depression. In that case, the person is exhausted, hopeless, indifferent, and believe that there is nothing for them in the future. To them, there is no meaning of life, tupical depression symptoms arise.

According to Elkin and Rosch (1990) workplace related stress in a major problem in the U.S. and it creates a major expense for corporations. Koeske, Kirk, and Koeske (1993) indicate that all jobs have some level of stress but jobs that are in the human services have additional stressors because they “derive from intense involvement in the lives of others”. (p.319). They also refer to the type of stress experienced by individuals working in human services as “burnout” (Koeske, Kirk, and Koeske, 1993, p.319). Another factor that can influence our stress level is how we handle life’s demands. There are different ways of reacting to the situations we face every day of our lives. We have all heard of expressions such as ‘road rage’ and ‘going postal’. These are terms that we have come to identified with violent reactions to stressors caused by situations all of us face every day. How many of us have experiences in the road that

In 1974, Freudenberger initially explored burnout in helping professions and concluded that it was a phenomenon resulting from workers' inability to handle increasing pressure to succeed professionally. Later the concept of burnout was defined by Cherniss [3] as a response to chronic difficulty in dealing with stress. Maslach and Jackson [21] view burnout as a multidimensional construct with three distinct dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and low personal accomplishment.