Author: Farkas, Judit Eszter
Burnout Defining burnout Stress can have harmful effects on individuals’ mental and physical health, as well as negative effects on organizational outcomes. These outcomes can be impaired performance and turnover. The main source of occupational stress is role stress. Role stress has two components: Role ambiguity and role conflict. Role ambiguity refers to both the unpredictability of performance consequences as well as information deficiency according to expected role behaviors. Role conflict refers to incongruent expectations, and it can occur between and within roles too. Role stress is linked to various dysfunctional outcomes, like uncertainty, job dissatisfaction and intentions to leave the organization. The most often examined consequence of role conflict and ambiguity is experienced burnout. Nowadays burnout is regarded as a serious problem. People who suffer it may experience reduced quality of life, and burnout may have a negative effect on family life and working life as well. Burnout is often defined as a unique type of stress syndrome, characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and diminished personal accomplishment. Emotional exhaustion is characterized by lack of energy and feeling that one’s emotional resources are used up due to excessive psychological demands. Depersonalization (aka dehumanization) is characterized by the treatment of others as objects rather than people through cynical, callous, and uncaring attitudes and behaviors. The diminished personal accomplishment is the third component, characterized by a tendency to evaluate oneself negatively due to the failure to produce results. Burnout is a process, and so the extreme degree of burnout is the endstate of a process, which develops over a considerable length of time. So it is appropriate to talk about degrees of burnout. Maslach suggested that emotional exhaustion appears first in the shape of excessive chronic demands that drain the individual's emotional resources, and that it then develops as a defensive coping strategy which limits the person's involvement with others. When individuals recognize the discrepancy between their current attitudes and prior opportunistic expectations, they may experience a sense of inadequacy in their ability to relate to people and perform their job. Burnout is examined mostly among helping professions like social workers, nurses and teachers. Hellesøy,
Grønhaug and Kvitastein (2000) examined the burnout among off-shore oil industry workers. They made reports and then factor analyzed the reported problems. They found four dimensions:
• Alienation: Feeling lonesome even together with other people; feeling that nobody cares or understands. • Focus loss: Difficulties in deciding, concentrating or ing. • Depression: Feeling tense; becoming easily irritated, feeling easily hurt. • Worry: worrying about home affects work; difficulties to sleep due to worry. Hellesøy et al identified the three components (emotinal exhaustion, depersonalization and dimnishing personal accomplishment) of burnout (of course with different names but the same content), that indicates that the dimensions observed by helping professions may have external validity. It means that they may be generalized to other industries and occupation. The fourth found dimension (Worry) indicates that certain burnout components may be industry or profession specific.
Measuring burnout Burnout can be measured with various tests. One is Burnout Questionnaire by Pines et al. This contains 21 item on five-point scale. In this questionnaire there are statements like that: „I am emotionally drained“ or „I feel depressed“. Other often used test is the Maslach Burnout Inventory by Maslach and Jackson. This inventory comprises 25 itmes on a five-point scale, which are in three subscales: exhaustion, cynicism and professional efficacy. Burnout can be assesed by the method of interview as well.
Effects of burnout Researchers have linked burnout to a broad variety of mental and health problems. Burnout may lead to the deterioration of family and social relationships, increased turnover and absenteeism and decreased quality and quantity of job performance. According to the results of the
Finnish
Health
2000 Study burnout and depressive symptoms are correlated, while burnout is statistically differentiated from depressive symptoms. Analyzing the data
Ahola,
Honkonen,
Isometsa,
Kalimo,
Nykyri, Aromaa and
Lönnqvist (2005) found that half of the study’s participants with severe burnout had a depressive disorder (based on the DSM – IV criteria). The risk of having a depressive disorder was greater when burnout was severe compared to mild or no burnout. Moreover, participants who had a current major depressive episode reported serious burnout more often than those who had had a major depressive episode earlier. The probability of having a depressive disorder rises with the level of burnout. Honkonen,
Ahola,
Pertovaara, Isometä,
Kalimo,
Nykyri,
Aromaae and
Lönnqvist (2006) found analyzig the datas of the the
Finnish
Health
2000 Study that burnout is associated with musculoskeletal diseases among women and with cardiovascular diseases among men. The frequency of musculoskeletal disorders, cardiovascular disease or any other physical diseases increased with the experienced level of burnout. These associations are not
explained by sociodemographic factors, health behavior, or depression. Physical illnesses are associated with all three dimensions of burnout.
Individual differences According to Perrewé,
Hochwarter,
Rossi,
Wallace,
Maignan,
Castro,
Ralston,
Westman,
Vollmer,
Tang, Wan and Van
Deusen (2002) findings general self efficacy is negatively associated with burnout. Which is not suprising by the fact that newcomers to an organization who have high level of efficacy expereince less anxiety, cope better with situational demands and are more statisfied with their job. Married people report lower level of burnout than others, while young people report higher level of burnout than older. Regarding the datas of the Finnish Health 2000 Study the relative risk of having major depressive disorder with severe burnout is greater for men altought there is no gender difference in the level of burnout. This may reflect the importance of work in men’s life. Using the Big5 model researchers found that extraversion is negatively related to cynicism, while conscientiousness and agreeableness are positively related to professional efficacy (so negatively related to reduced professional efficacy). Neuroticism is positively related to exhaustion and cynicism and is the most influential burnout predictor. (Kim, Shin and Schwanger, 2009) High burnout countries are (by the self reported level of experienced burnout) Japan, Fiji, Hong Kong and Brazil, while low are , Israel, , China and United States. Risked popularities are the helping professions (teachers, nurses, social workers), but as well as the workers of off-shore oil industry, public service lawyers, female human service professionals and so on. Nowadays the workloads and demands grow so burnout may be discovered in new areas of professions.
Prevention, intervention Such job resources as social , autonomy and control coping, help reduce job demands, and this way help to decrease the feeling of burnout. There are also different kinds of intervention programs as well. Awa,
Plaumann and
Walter (2009) examined different intervention programs. The examined intervention programs contained: • • • • • • • • •
professional skill training, clinical supervision cognitive behavioral training, counseling relaxation using brain machines adaptive coping, refresher courses psycho-social skill training recreational music making (RMM) online counseling and supervision ‘interapy’ analytic and experimental psychotherapy communication training
• relaxation training • autogenic training • laughter therapy An intervention program can be person-directed, organization-directed or combination of both intervention types. About 80% percent of the programs reviewed by Awa et al led to positive effects on burnout while 20% had no positive effects or depreciation in burnout or some core component was ed. 82% of all person-directed interventions led to a significant decrease in burnout or positive changes in its risk factors. The effects last up to 6 month. All the combined intervention led to positive effects in burnout, 80% of these programs effects last up to 1 year. The intervention programs, which include refresher courses, resulted in longer lasting positive effects on burnout.
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