Burnout is a disease of modern working society

Only a decade ago, burnout was a term mentioned only in medical books, possibly in academic papers. Today, we are very familiar with creative burnout, political burnout, fitness burnout, burnout due to various applications, burnout in a partnership and parental relationship, and even burnout in playing video games. It is a chronic stress that accumulates, and the result is physical and emotional exhaustion.

This form of stress, which ultimately prevents individuals from functioning normally, has also been recognized by the World Health Organization. Excessive self-expectations and constant breaking of one's own limits by working mostly overtime are conducive to emotional and mental burnout. To avoid such a scenario it is necessary to have self-control.

This is exactly what Stela Salminen, a professor at Jyväskylä University in Finland, who is the co-author of several combustion studies, concluded. When a burn out occurs, people usually help themselves by changing their lives and habits from the bottom up. Some are moving out of the state as well, and some are just changing jobs. But without true rehabilitation there is no complete recovery. It includes all types of relaxation from vacations in luxury resorts to courses over the Internet.

Conducting a small study in 2015, Professor Salminen interviewed 12 people, and the analysis showed that those who successfully recovered in the meantime experienced the discovery that they were in charge of their own well-being. - The concept of responsibility for people who have permanently recovered seems to be key to that. A certain percentage of recovery must come from within. We need some individual changes and mental shifts if we want to recover from burnout, but that is not enough because burnout is not and should not be treated as an individual problem. It is an occupational disorder in itself - Salminen told the BBC.

He adds that if people believe they can influence their environment, they usually take the necessary steps to reverse the factors that brought them to the state they are in. So they change their sleeping habits, they make sure that their free time is really free, which has proven to be a big problem in working from home. While self-care and changing mindsets are important, some experts find the emphasis on employees useless and misleading because the real culprits are the jobs themselves and their unreasonable demands.

Chronic stress thus returns if the job is not split into more employees and if the workload is not generally reduced. In addition to work overload, the trigger for burnout can be low income, which usually affects women because they are paid less than men in the 21st century, but also unsettled family relationships.

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