From Burnout to Occupational Depression: Recent Developments in Research on Job-Related Distress and Occupational Health

Abstract

Job-related distress has been a focal concern in occupational health science. Job-related distress has a well-documented health-damaging and life-threatening character, not to mention its economic cost. In this article, we review recent developments in research on job-related distress and examine ongoing changes in how job-related distress is conceptualized and assessed. By adopting an approach that is theoretically, empirically, and clinically informed, we demonstrate how the construct of burnout and its measures, long favored in research on job-related distress, have proved to be problematic. We underline a new recommendation for addressing job-related distress within the long-established framework of depression research. In so doing, we present the Occupational Depression Inventory, a recently developed instrument devised to assess depressive symptoms that individuals specifically attribute to their work. We close our paper by laying out the advantages of a paradigm shift from burnout to occupational depression.

Distress in the workplace: Characterizing the relationship of burnout measures to the Occupational Depression Inventory.

“…First, they can estimate the prevalence of depressive symptoms and provisional diagnoses of depression that individuals connect to their jobs. It is not possible to estimate the prevalence of burnout because it does not have clear diagnostic criteria (Bianchi et al, 2017; Rotenstein et al, 2018; Schonfeld & Bianchi, 2021; Schwenk & Gold, 2018). Second, these professionals can direct a suffering worker to appropriate treatment (e.g., cognitive behavior therapy).…”

“…A syndromal hypothesis follows from Maslach and colleagues’ tripartite conception of burnout, namely, that the subscales of the MBI, which measure emotional exhaustion (EE), depersonalization (DP), and (reduced) personal accomplishment (PA), should be more highly correlated with each other than with nonburnout measures, such as depressive symptom scales (Bianchi et al, 2021; Schonfeld & Bianchi, 2021). Maslach et al (2016) underlined the importance of burnout’s discriminant validity that “each component [of burnout be] more closely tied to one another than to any aspect of depression” (p. 21).…”

“…Over the last decade, evidence has accumulated suggesting that the burnout construct may capture a depressive phenomenon, though in a truncated and roundabout manner (Bianchi et al, 2021; Schonfeld & Bianchi, 2021). It is well established that depressive symptoms constitute a basic human response to chronic insurmountable stress, job-related or not (Schonfeld & Chang, 2017; Willner et al, 2013).…”

“…Third, the study extends the corpus of burnout–depression research by examining the extent of burnout symptoms among likely cases of occupational depression. Based on the state of the science (Bianchi et al, 2021; Meier & Kim, 2022; Schonfeld & Bianchi, 2021), we hypothesized that EE and the CBI would lack discriminant validity vis-à-vis occupational depression. In practical terms, we anticipated that (a) the ODI–EE and ODI–CBI correlations would be greater than the intercorrelations among the MBI subscales and (b) at a granular level ODI, EE, and CBI items, to a much greater extent than DP and PA items, would load on the same general factor in an exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) bifactor analyses.…”

Prevalence and Determinants of Burnout Among Palliative Care Clinicians in Saudi Arabia

“…For instance, while depression can be caused by a variety of causes, a large body of data from well-controlled longitudinal research shows that occupational stressors are linked to higher levels of depressive symptoms (as judged by cause-neutral symptom scales) and a higher risk of depressive disorders. Job stressors are unlikely to increase the risk of burnout without commensurately also increasing the risk of depressive psychiatric illnesses ( 8 , 9 ).…”