MENTAL HEALTH, STRESS & WELLBEING
“Burnout did not develop in a historical vacuum; in addition to a subjective experience, it is also a multi-faceted,
socio-cultural phenomenon.” - Wilmar B. Schaufeli
becomes superfluous or excessive, performance begins to diminish.
However, the man responsible for coining the term ‘burnout’, in the intellectual sphere at least, actually borrowed the word from New York’s illegal drug scene. German-born American psychologist Herbert Freudenberger was observing volunteers at St Mark’s Free Clinic in the city when he noticed how, over a period of time, some of the helpers were becoming less motivated and showing signs of emotional exhaustion. In his 1974 book, Burnout: The High Cost of High Achievement, he defined the word as “the extinction of motivation or incentive, especially where one’s devotion to a cause or relationship fails to produce the desired results.”
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According to Wilmar B. Schaufeli, a Professor of Work and Organisational Psychology at Utrecht University (Netherlands), “burnout did not develop in a historical vacuum; in addition to a subjective experience, it is also a multi-faceted, socio-cultural phenomenon.” That is to say that the expeditious bureaucratisation of the human services sector in the latter half of the 20th century ensured smaller businesses were transformed into, “large modern organisations with formal job descriptions.”
Schaufeli believes that viewed from this perspective, “burnout represents the price paid for professionalising the helping professions from callings into modern occupations.” In this sense, the very things that began to shape the 21st century – globalisation, privatisation, filling the skills gap and the great efforts companies went to for higher productivity – may have become essential catalysts for a more stressed-out, overstretched workforce.
A QUESTION OF PERSONALITY Some people are more susceptible to burnout than others and it is often high-achievers and perfectionists, and those that put others before themselves that suffer from the more extreme cases of the condition.
Murray explains: “The original study into burnout was by those in the caring profession, but you can have
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