Is Burnout a Depressive Condition? A 14-Sample Meta-Analytic and Bifactor Analytic Study

Abstract

There is no consensus on whether burnout constitutes a depressive condition or an original entity requiring specific medical and legal recognition. In this study, we examined burnout–depression overlap using 14 samples of individuals from various countries and occupational domains ( N = 12,417). Meta-analytically pooled disattenuated correlations indicated (a) that exhaustion—burnout’s core—is more closely associated with depressive symptoms than with the other putative dimensions of burnout (detachment and efficacy) and (b) that the exhaustion–depression association is problematically strong from a discriminant validity standpoint ( r = .80). The overlap of burnout’s core dimension with depression was further illuminated in 14 exploratory structural equation modeling bifactor analyses. Given their consistency across countries, languages, occupations, measures, and methods, our results offer a solid base of evidence in support of the view that burnout problematically overlaps with depression. We conclude by outlining avenues of research that depart from the use of the burnout construct.

Occupational Depression, Cognitive Performance, and Task Appreciation: A Study Based on Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices

“…The ODI thus assesses anhedonia, depressed mood, sleep alterations, fatigue/loss of energy, appetite alterations, feelings of worthlessness, cognitive impairment, psychomotor alterations, and suicidal ideation. The ODI was devised to overcome limitations of current measures of job-related distress, most notably, burnout measures ( Bianchi et al, 2017 , 2020 , 2021 ; Rotenstein et al, 2018 ; Schwenk and Gold, 2018 ; Schonfeld et al, 2019a , b ; Verkuilen et al, 2020 ; Vinkers and Schaafsma, 2021 ). Available evidence indicates that the ODI has excellent psychometric and structural properties and constitutes a promising tool for occupational health specialists ( Bianchi and Schonfeld, 2020 , 2021a , b ).…”

Is There Utility in Specifying Professional Efficacy as an Outcome of Burnout in the Employee Health Impairment Process

“…However, research on burnout has been ongoing and abundant over several decades, but there has also been an increase in the challenges facing the burnout concept. This has resulted in increasingly divergent streams of literature recently; some research suggests that burnout is equated with depression (e.g., [ 2 ]), others suggest that burnout and depression remain separate entities [ 3 ], a “harmonized” definition of burnout (“In a worker, occupational burnout or occupational physical AND emotional exhaustion state is an exhaustion due to prolonged exposure to work-related problems”) has been proposed [ 4 ], (p. 95), questions have been raised about the aforementioned proposed consensus definition [ 5 ], there is incongruence regarding the factor structure of burnout across studies (e.g., [ 6 ]), and a critique of overt researcher concern for the psychometric properties of burnout scales has emerged in recent years [ 7 ]. Therefore, arguably, the burnout research landscape is active and diverse, with specific nuances and complexities.…”

Who needs to be “burned-out”? Time for a new approach to job-related distress

“…Despite nearly 50 years of research, burnout remains loosely characterized and undiagnosable [1][2][3]. Consequently, it is impossible to identify individuals with burnout or estimate burnout's prevalence validly and reliably [1][2][3].…”

“…Despite nearly 50 years of research, burnout remains loosely characterized and undiagnosable [1][2][3]. Consequently, it is impossible to identify individuals with burnout or estimate burnout's prevalence validly and reliably [1][2][3]. People do not always realize that published estimates of burnout's prevalence are based on clinically arbitrary, theoretically groundless, and highly heterogeneous identification criteria [3].…”

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Burnout is a popular indicator of job-related distress, notably in research on the ill-being of medical professionals [1,2]. The burnout construct is, however, plagued by definitional and measurement problems [1][2][3]. Often unnoticed, these problems undermine findings and conclusions emanating from burnout research [2,3].

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