What is the burnout syndrome?

First reports on a burnout syndrome appeared in 197 0s in the USA. One of the founders of a burnout idea was an American psychiatrist, H. Fredenberger, who worked in an alternative medical help service. In 1974 he described a phenomenon that he observed himself and by his colleagues (exhaustion, loss of motivation and responsibility), and gave it a memorizing name: a burnout. Nowadays, there are lots of different types of burnout definitions that particularly correspond to the activity among groups of society. According to Fredenberger, professional burnout is an energy exhaustion among professionals in the sphere of social help, it is when people feel that they are overloaded with problems of other people. K. Maslach determines this concept in another way when he argues that burnout is a syndrome of physical and emotional exhaustion, including the development of a negative self-esteem, a negative attitude to work and loss of understanding and sympathy for clients. Maslach emphasizes that a burnout is not the loss of creativity, not the reaction on boredom, but a problem that arises because of the stress, caused by personal interrelationship. When Stress turns into burnout The moment when stress comes to a burnout is not clearly stated. But G. Selje describes the general adaptation syndrome as stress in the whole body that is developed in a definite time. A person, being at the stage of exhaustion, is not able to adapt or to resist. Although, stress is one of the necessary components of our everyday life, when the level of it is too high it becomes toxic. The optimal amount of stress is very personal. Still, Selje claims that some people look for stress and need it to live and to feel themselves happy. Other people, at the same time, avoid stress and want to live calm and easy. Each person needs to set such a level of stress that is needed for a successful living. In the table below you can find some of the factors that influence the appearance of a burnout syndrome:

Besides that I found that a recent study which sees burnout as a consequence of a poor leadership in many companies. Occupational health practitioner and doctors assume not work as such, makes people sick, even in compressed form or flexible, but its poor organization. To consistent time pressure, many savings targets and the desire for a permanent increase in efficiency can neither companies (which are in global competition) nor individual leaders oppose something. But in my opinion what can be changed however, and have significant effects on job satisfaction and therefore also on the number of burnout diseases, is a companys internal culture, especially its management culture. Work should be distributed evenly, strategic goals clearly

communicated and performance evaluated objectively. Some possibilities may be for example an appreciative leadership style, active feedback and a strong autonomy in the discharge of individual tasks. As we can see here the burnout syndrome has a wide field of causes, many symptoms and there are even more ways to heal or to prevent it. In my next blogs Im going to talk about burnout among students , what else managers can do to protect themselves and their workers, and what the importance of a work-life balance is.