MENTAL HEALTH, STRESS & WELLBEING
CONDITION OF THE TIMES
Burnout is not a new phenomenon. But as the line between work and life becomes increasingly blurred, it is something employers should take heed of. Ryan Lloyd, Editor of Tomorrow’s Health and Safety, investigates this growing occupational issue and asks what measures we can take to extinguish it from the workplace.
Siobhan Murray remembers quite vividly the first time she experienced burnout. Shortly before the birth of her first son 14 years ago she was working as head of communications for the fast food giant McDonald’s. As an integral part of the team that set up the Ronald McDonald charity in Dublin, she was working flat out. Not shy of a heavy workload – time working on the corporate side of the music industry had seen to that – she was head of a project that raised €3.5m for the charity in three years. But long hours and a heavy emotional investment ensured her success came at a deep personal cost.
“I was juggling a lot at the time,” she explains to Tomorrow’s Health & Safety. “I used to live near to where I worked and I would go home at lunchtimes and just lie on the floor and have a nap before getting myself ready to go back to work in the afternoon. It was complete and utter exhaustion.”
Murray’s situation is not unique. Whilst statistics on burnout are notoriously difficult to gather, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) puts those experiencing work-related stress in 2018 at 595,000. It is, along with musculoskeletal disorders (MSD), the leading cause of working days lost through work-related injury or ill health.
“Even though the term came out in the 1970’s, no one ever really said 30 years ago, ‘I have burnout’. You were just signed off with your nerves or you were having a nervous breakdown. We’ve become much more aware of it,” she continues.
Just after the birth of her second child, Murray decided to leave the corporate world altogether. Fascinated by the human experience, human nature, resilience and the way we work and operate, she realised psychotherapy could offer her the sort of career she craved.
She is now a resilience coach, international speaker and thanks to the success of her best-selling book, The
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Burnout Solution: 12 weeks to a calmer you, one of the go-to experts on all things burnout related.
“I define burnout as physical, mental and emotional exhaustion brought on by emotionally demanding situations that go on for long periods of time (longer than three months),” explains Murray.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has a similar definition. In the middle of last year (28 May 2019) burnout was included in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases as an occupational phenomenon. They defined the condition as “a syndrome conceptualised as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterised by three dimensions: A feeling of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one’s job, or feeling of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and reduced professional efficacy.”
A BRIEF HISTORY OF BURNOUT Burnout is not a new phenomenon. Indeed, as far
back as 1908, psychologists Robert M. Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson measured an empirical relationship between arousal and performance. The Yerkes-Dodson Law suggests that the more aroused someone is, both physiologically and mentally, the better their performance, but only up to a certain point. Most importantly, when arousal
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