Burnout Trends

Trends in Organizational Burnout: Organizational Burnout was totally unheard of prior to 1970’s. But once research on it was initiated by Christina Maslach in 1970 it became a topic of interest for many psychologists. Many articles were written about it, as were many books. The research on Burnout has developed over a period of time. During the 1970’s the research was mostly based on case studies and theoretical considerations whereas at the current stage it is based on hypothesis testing prospective studies. History of Burnout Research: The major themes and issued covered by Burnout have been shaped by the type of research burnout. The history of Burnout has gone through the following phases: The pioneering Phase: In this phase the goal was to articulate the phenomena of Burnout. The research and studies were exclusively carried out in The United States. Initial articles were published during mid 1970’s by Freudenberger in 1975, a physiatrist and Maslach in 1976, a social physiologist. This early writing was based upon interviews conducted with people working in Public Services like nurses, firemen etc. It was Freudenberger who coined the term: Burnout. The clinical and social psychological perspectives of initial articles solely affected the 1st phase of burnout research. On the clinical side the focus was on the symptoms of burnout and its effect on mental health. On the social side the focus was on the receiver and provider of the services and on the situational context of the service occupation. The initial research was mostly descriptive and qualitative in nature utilizing interviews, case studies and onsite observations. Through the initial research it was clear that burnout had identifiable regularities. Three components were listed down: Emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced efficacy. The situational context of this phenomenon of provider-recipient came from field observations. Factors which contributed to burnout like high number of client’s prevalence of negative client feedback were seen firsthand. To provider would resort to distances to avoid emotional contact with client which was called “distancing”. This detachment sometimes led to staff responding to client in a negative, callous or dehumanized way. The Empirical Phase: The work on Burnouts shifted to more towards systematic empirical research during 1980’s. Work during this time became more quantitative in nature using questionnaire, surveys’ and studying large populations. The scale which was developed during this time is called “Maslach Burnout Inventory” developed by Maslach and Jackson in 1981. During this time teachers were also included in the area of research. In the 1990’s the empirical phase continued. But it was spread into several directions. Firstly the concept was extended beyond services and education (e.g. military, clerical computer technology, managers). Secondly the Burnout research was enhanced by use of more sophisticated methodology and statistical tools. Thirdly longitudinal studies were conducted to assess the link between work environment at one time and an individual’s feelings and thoughts at a later time. Longitudinal studies are important to ascertain the impact of interventions to alleviate burnout. New research supported the hypothesis that client-related stressors (like frequency of contact, with chronically and terminally ill patients, or confrontation with death) did bring an additional variance in burnout scores over and above job stressors (like overload of work, role conflict or time pressure). Earlier research didn’t focus on these. During the early 1990’s the research on Burnout was diversified outside America. Initially the expansion was in Canada and Great Britain and latter on it spread to all of Europe and Israel. It was found that the scores of burnout were lesser in case of Europe than North America. It may be because of the fact that North Americans are far more achievement oriented which causes them to feel stressed out more. The latest trend in research is to find direct correlation between job burnout and psychosomatic deceases. The latest research on Job Burnout has shown an association between coronary heart decease which is a major risk factor for heart attack and job burnout. People who are burned out have 79% more chance of heart attack risk. These findings are a result of study which was conducted by University of Tel Aviv for 3.4 years. A similar study was conducted to see the correlation between Diabetes and Job Burnout by the same university. It was found that people going through Job Burnout had 84% more risk of being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.