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. 2020 Dec 9:11:519237.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2020.519237. eCollection 2020.

The Burnout Phenomenon: A Résumé After More Than 15,000 Scientific Publications

Andreas Hillert  1 , Arnd Albrecht  2 , Ulrich Voderholzer  1
Affiliations

The Burnout Phenomenon: A Résumé After More Than 15,000 Scientific Publications

Andreas Hillert et al. Front Psychiatry. .

Abstract

The "burnout" phenomenon, supposedly caused by work related stress, is a challenge for academic psychiatry both conceptually and professionally. Since the first description of burnout in 1974 until today, more than 140 definitions have been suggested. Burnout-symptomatology's main characteristic, the experience of exhaustion, is unspecific. Different development-models of burnout were proposed, assumed to depict a quasi-natural process. These could not be confirmed empirically. An expert consensus on the diagnostic criteria and the conceptual location, whether as an independent disorder or as a risk, could not be agreed on. Nevertheless, the phenomenon of burnout in the ICD-11 is considered to be categorized as a work-related disorder. Psychiatric research on the burnout-phenomenon ignores problems of definition resulting from different perspectives: It may meet societal expectations, but does not fulfill scientific criteria, and therefore is not suitable to establish an objective diagnosis and treatment. Parallel detection of ICD/DSM diagnoses from an expert perspective and subjective perturbation models are considered appropriate.

Keywords: burnout; concepts of mental illness; depression; scientific conceptualization of psychic phenomena; stress; subjective disease models; work-related disorders.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The handling editor declared a past collaboration with one of the authors UV.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Perspectives on burnout.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Overview on most common burnout phase theories.
Figure 3
Figure 3
ICD-11 for mortality and morbidity statistics (54).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Burnout self-identification questionnaire.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Depression incidences experienced burnouts vs. feeling exhausted (57, 61).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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