If you’re feeling stressed out at work, you’re not alone. 83% of US workers are suffering from
some kind of work-related stress, which causes one million people to miss work every day.
As more and more people work from home during the coronavirus pandemic, work-related stress may
increase as the boundaries between work and home life become blurred. If this stress becomes
overwhelming, it can cause burnout.
Burnout is a type of work-related stress. The World Health Organization (WHO) lists burnout as
an ‘occupational phenomenon‘ in its International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Though it
is not considered a medical condition, WHO notes that it can influence your health, and cause
you to reach out to health services.
“Burnout describes the thoughts and feelings associated with feeling overwhelmed and fatigued
by life circumstances,” says Rachel O’Neill, Ph.D., a practicing therapist and Director of
Clinical Effectiveness for Talkspace.
The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) is a survey designed by Christina Maslach, a psychology
professor from the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1980s. The MBI is still used
today by health professionals as the main way to assess burnout, and it is the basis for
WHO's definition of the condition.
While burnout includes many of the same symptoms as stress, there are three specific feelings that differentiate burnout:
Often, burnout results in depressive symptoms, such as sadness or a lack of hope, O’Neill says. But it can also contribute to a wide range of negative emotions and even physical symptoms, such as:
A 2018 study of 7,500 workers in the USA showed that employees suffering from burnout
are 63% more likely to take sick days, show less confidence in their work performance,
and are more than twice as likely to leave their job.
The study found the top reasons for burnout included:
Moreover, a selection of studies from the American Institute of Stress found that the
biggest sources of stress at work were: ineffective communication (80%); too much workload
(39%); demands from their manager or supervisor (35%); and unclear expectations (31%).
As more people work from home during the coronavirus pandemic, O’Neill says many of these
problems — poor communication, isolation and lack of support, difficulty meeting
deadlines, and environmental distractions — could all worsen feelings of burnout and be
difficult on your mental health.
-The American Institute of Stress
Compassion fatigue is a broadly defined concept that can include emotional, physical, and spiritual distress in those providing care to another. It is associated with caregiving where people or animals are experiencing significant emotional or physical pain and suffering.
Feeling empathy for those you care for may seem like a given, it may even be the reason you're
doing what you do, but this empathy can often go too far, leading you to feel the symptoms of
compassion fatigue as you suffer from another person’s trauma.
Compassion fatigue, or vicarious/secondary trauma, is much more serious than general burnout:
it’s a caregiver experiencing trauma after witnessing another’s physical, emotional, or
spiritual pain. Concept pioneers McCann and Pearlman define it as “a process through which the
caregiving individual’s own internal experience becomes transformed through engagement with
the client’s trauma” (1990).
According to the Compassion Fatigue Awareness Project, anywhere from 25–50% of healthcare
workers experience symptoms of compassion fatigue. Everyone from long-term care workers to
family caregivers to emergency room nurses to police officers may find themselves taking
on others’ trauma.