Stress & Burn Out – Professional fatigue syndrome
“Burn-out” is a condition characterized by emotional, cognitive, and often physical exhaustion, attributed to chronic, prolonged stress in the professional context. Burn-out is not included as an official diagnosis or disease in any of the official manuals of psychiatric disorders. It is not mentioned in the DSM-5 at all, while in the ICD-11, it is officially recognized as one of the factors affecting health status or interactions with healthcare services, one of the reasons why someone seeks help from these services.
According to the ICD-11 definition, it is characterized by three, specifically related to the professional context, dimensions:
– Feelings of exhaustion and lack of energy
– Indifference, negative emotions, cynicism towards work
– Reduced professional effectiveness
It is important to emphasize that professional burnout is not merely anxiety resulting from professional factors. It entails an extended period of anxiety and exhaustion, experienced as something that cannot be improved, and usually accompanied by a set of related psychological symptoms, such as a sense of emptiness, apathy, despair, anger, irritability, mood swings, as well as physical symptoms like headaches, fatigue, digestive problems, sleep disturbances, and difficulty concentrating.
Given that it is not a psychiatric diagnosis per se but a condition directly related to today’s professionals’ work and life conditions, psychotherapy is perhaps the most suitable path for individuals to gradually overcome this burdensome condition and its consequences. Of course, this does not exclude the use of some pharmacological treatment if considered necessary.
