Burnout. A term first coined in 1974, it has been increasingly applied in the first person ever since. Although not classified as a mental disorder by the World Health Organization (WHO), burnout is a part of everyone’s life and often has profound impacts on one’s standard of living and emotional well-being. The online lifestyle and workplace that was adopted at the onset of COVID-19 has only intensified the rate at which employees and students alike feel distanced from their work, with there being little distinction between work and personal life.
Zoom fatigue is an increasingly well-known term for one aspect of this mental depletion. The inability to truly leave one’s work when working from home has contributed to overwork and a reduced capacity to re-energize. But this is not a trend that can be ascribed solely to social distancing—even in 2018, almost half of workers were reported to experience burnout on the job. Historically, this occupational exhaustion has been especially problematic in academia, health care, and social work, where the incumbent stress and emotional toll has resulted in rampant burnout.
Burnout can be delineated principally by three well-characterized psychological dimensions: exhaustion, depersonalization, and feelings of reduced personal efficacy. While exhaustion is straightforwardly defined as feelings of fatigue, depersonalization can refer to increased cynicism; irritability; a tendency to view clients as objects as opposed to people; and reduced personal efficacy, as well as a perception that one’s work is meaningless or inutile.
These facets of burnout are measured by the Maslach Burnout Inventory, the predominant test for its assessment that has been adopted by the WHO. Many symptoms of burnout align and correlate with anxiety and, particularly, clinical depression, to the extent that some studies claim that burnout is a subtype of depression. However, this is not a widely accepted idea, and multiple studies support distinct construct validities between the three—for example, burnout tends to be centred around work-related stress, whereas depression is pervasive in all contexts of one’s life. Though there is definite overlap between these psychological conditions, there is substantial evidence that burnout is a separate concept from other disorders.
As a predominantly stress-related syndrome, burnout has been suggested to be biologically connected to the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, a neuroendocrine pathway that mediates the production of cortisol, the chief stress hormone of the body. Although multiple studies have attempted to find and elucidate a relationship between burnout and the body, meta-analyses show contradictory findings, which may be ascribed to a lack of consistency in how and when to measure cortisol levels, small sample sizes, and so on.
Some studies have pointed to decreased sleep, higher immune cell counts, and elevated blood cholesterol as correlates of burnout. Recently, attention has been drawn to brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a growth factor which promotes neural differentiation and development, which is potentially decreased in individuals experiencing burnout. While no definitive biomarker or physiological mechanism of burnout has been credibly identified, further research is warranted to validate burnout as an independent psychological syndrome.
It’s easy to blame aspects of present-day society—interconnectedness, social media, hustle culture—for the emergence of burnout. Though the term burnout is just over four decades old, there is evidence to suggest that the phenomenon of emotional exhaustion and disillusionment stems from a much deeper past than the twentieth century. And so, as we students struggle with motivation, become dissuaded with our essays or courses, or suffer from imposter syndrome, perhaps some comfort can be found in the knowledge that burnout is not a lonely condition, but an intensely relatable one.
As students, some common pieces of advice we’ve all heard for dealing with burnout include “drink some water,” “go on a walk,” and “pick up a hobby.” As burnout is associated with excessive time and effort devoted to work and an insufficient amount to relaxation, most simple solutions involve taking breaks and implementing a distinct separation between work and life. It’s easy to recognize these strategies, but it’s a completely different beast to integrate them in our daily lives. It’s important to take time to learn what works for you, and to know that you aren’t alone in burnout.
