Burnout: Moving beyond the status quo.

Abstract

Burnout has been defined as a job-induced syndrome combining emotional exhaustion, depersonalization/cynicism, and a sense of reduced personal accomplishment. In this article, we expand on past analyses of burnout by reviewing key, yet overlooked, problems affecting the construct. We concomitantly examine the implications of these problems for the overall validity of burnout research. Our work shows that burnout research is undermined by 4 main problems. First, what constitutes a case of burnout is unclear. Second, the basic conceptualization and operationalization of burnout are ill aligned. Third, burnout is unlikely to be the specifically job-induced syndrome it has been posited to be. Fourth, the discriminant validity of the burnout construct is unsatisfactory. These fundamental problems, disregarded for decades, render burnout research inconclusive. This state of affairs (a) bears on researchers' and practitioners' ability to monitor and protect workers' health and (b) prevents public health policymakers from producing authoritative recommendations. The burnout construct thus appears to not well serve the goal of promoting occupational health. The depression construct may offer occupational health specialists a way out of the "burnout impasse." Depression is diagnosable. Like burnout, depression can be studied dimensionally (i.e., as a process) and examined from both an individual and a social standpoint. Methods for investigating the etiological link between depressive symptoms and disorders and job stress are available.

A five‐sample confirmatory factor analytic study of burnout‐depression overlap

“…The symptoms assessed by burnout and depression scales could thus be considered manifestations of a single syndrome. All in all, our findings are consistent with the mounting evidence that burnout is a depressive condition (for reviews, see Bianchi et al, , and Bianchi, Schonfeld, et al, ; for very recent findings, see Schonfeld et al, ).…”

“…Based on their experience as occupational health practitioners, Durand‐Moreau and Dewitte () concluded that the burnout‐depression distinction is therapeutically inoperant and fueled by rhetorical contortions rather than sound clinical arguments. Bianchi et al () indicated that the dimensions and items of the MBI likely referred to depressive manifestations in a roundabout way (e.g., using a psychosocial, rather than medical, terminology). In a historical and sociological examination of so‐called exhaustion syndromes, Schaffner () observed that entities such as nervous weakness (described in the 18th century), neurasthenia (described in the 19th century), and burnout (described in the 20th century) could be regarded as successive avatars of melancholic weariness , a depressive condition already theorized by physicians of the Hellenic and Roman eras.…”

“…While burnout has become popular among occupational health specialists (Schonfeld & Chang, ), the characterization of the syndrome and the (discriminant) validity of the construct are subject to dispute (Bianchi, Schonfeld, & Laurent, ; Cox, Tisserand, & Taris, ; Maslach & Leiter, ; Rotenstein et al, ; Schwenk & Gold, ). As an illustration, there is no established diagnosis for burnout (Bianchi, Schonfeld, & Laurent, ; Mirkovic & Bianchi, ) and burnout is not nosologically recognized, either by the American Psychiatric Association () or by the World Health Organization ().…”

“…In recent years, the distinctiveness of burnout vis‐à‐vis depression has been increasingly called into question (for reviews, see Bianchi et al, ; Bianchi, Schonfeld, et al, ). From a theoretical standpoint, the rationale underlying the view that burnout is not a depressive condition is unclear.…”

“…However, because the burnout syndrome could be, without any contradiction, job‐related and depressive in nature, the relevance of job‐relatedness to the debate on the burnout‐depression distinction is not clear (for a discussion of this issue, see Bianchi, Schonfeld, et al, , p. 193). Moreover, the view that burnout is a “work‐specific” condition has been empirically challenged (Bianchi et al, ; Hakanen & Bakker, ). As an illustration, Leiter and Maslach () found an average correlation of 0.26 between scores on the MBI‐General Survey (MBI‐GS) and scores on the Areas of Worklife Scale―a measure supposed to comprehensively assess the “major organizational antecedents of burnout” (Maslach et al, , p. 414).…”