How to differentiate burnout from depression and acute stress

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HOW TO DIFFERENTIATE BURNOUT FROM DEPRESSION

Burnout and depression can look very similar. Both are often characterised by feelings of fatigue and low energy, sleep disturbances, feeling sad and distressed. But unlike burnout, depression is a psychiatric diagnosis with symptoms which have a global impact – not limited to occupational context. Depression is potentially a severely debilitating condition, affecting many areas of the person’s life. Continue reading

Burnout phases and consequences

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Burnout is a process that develops in stages over several weeks or months – even years. One of the best-known multi-stage models was developed by a psychologist Herbert Freudenberger, who was also the first to describe the term „burnout“ in 1974 as „a state of mental and physical exhaustion caused by one’s professional life”, “a desease of over-commitment”. At each of burnout phases, different physiological and psychological symptoms and consequences are described.

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Burnout causes related to work, lifestyle and personality type

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In most cases, burnout causes relates to our working life. However, anyone who feels overworked and undervalued for a long time is at risk for burnout — from the hard-working manager who hasn’t had a holiday in a long time, to a stay at home mother looking after her two children and an aging mother. There are, however, other factors than only these job-related which contribute to burnout, including lifestyle and certain personality characteristics. Continue reading

Burnout definition

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Work-related stress is one of the biggest health and safety challenges that we face in Europe, with one in four workers affected.

Between 50% – 60% of all lost working days are related to excessive work stress and the annual economic cost in the EU is estimated at 20 billion Euros. Continue reading

Burnout symptoms through stages

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Burnout is a gradual process that progresses over an extended period of time. If you’re not paying attention to some subtle – at first! – warning signals, they get worse and worse as time goes on.

The early burnout symptoms suggest that something is wrong that needs to be addressed. If you respond to this warning, you can prevent a major breakdown. If you ignore them, you’ll eventually burn out. Continue reading

Frequently Asked Questions on Burnout FAQ

We collected and answered the most common questions and presented them in “Burnout FAQ“. We hope it will make the phenomenon more clear and understandable.

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1) Is burnout a mental disease or not?

It is not a mental disorder in the clinical sense (ICD -10) but a set of different physical and psychological symptoms that arise and it is important to perform a correct diagnosis (category Z73.0, the chronic fatigue syndrome or burnout syndrome).

2) Is burnout a personality disorder?

It is not a personality disorder (like neurosis, psychosis, schizophrenia, paranoia). It is a pathological behaviour modification which arises when specific and strong stress conditions affect the person. Continue reading