Most people do not attribute their burnout symptoms to work, 2025, Schonfeld et al

[rvallee]

Most people do not attribute their burnout symptoms to work

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002239992400374X?via%3Dihub

Highlights
• Only a minority of participants attribute their burnout symptoms to work.
• Burnout is not attributed to work more often than general conditions are.
• Job variables show intricate links to burnout and general conditions.
• Burnout does not stand out as a condition primarily or specifically related to work.

A prevailing belief among researchers is that burnout is a work-specific syndrome induced by intractable job stress. The validity of this belief, however, remains unclear. This cross-sectional study compared burnout with two general conditions, nonspecific psychological distress (NSPD) and exhaustion, in terms of (a) causal attributions to work and (b) associations with 11 job variables (e.g., job satisfaction).

The study involved 813 individuals employed in Norway (70.5 % female). Burnout was assessed with the Burnout Assessment Tool; NSPD, with the K6; and exhaustion, with the Karolinska Exhaustion Disorder Scale. Results showed that only 27.7 % of participants with burnout symptoms attributed these symptoms to work. The proportions of individuals ascribing their symptoms to work were similar for NSPD (26.9 %) and exhaustion (27.5 %). The higher one's burnout score, the higher the likelihood of attributing one's burnout, NSPD, and exhaustion symptoms to work.

Overall, burnout shared more variance with job variables than did NSPD and exhaustion. Coworker support, job security, and job autonomy constituted notable exceptions. In multiple regression analyses, seven of the 11 job variables predicted NSPD; five predicted burnout and exhaustion. An a posteriori analysis of a nationally balanced quota sample of 591 U.S. employees (48.2 % female) replicated our main finding—only 35.9 % of participants attributed their burnout symptoms to work. This study invites stakeholders to exercise more caution when making etiological inferences about burnout. Assuming that symptoms experienced at work are necessarily caused by work may hinder our ability to mitigate these symptoms. Our findings further question work-centric views of burnout.

 

[rvallee]

Randomly saw an article about it this week, although it's from 2024. From our friends at the Journal of psychosomatic research, The opening sentence is a bit silly since that belief exists only because burnout has been asserted to essentially be either/or overwork, or being unhappy at work. It's pretty much how it's defined. I guess they never bothered to check. Then again, they may have and decided that it didn't matter anyway.

I don't think much of their alternative interpretation, it's all very hand-wavy and about as silly as the old deconditioning tropes, where just because deconditioning is not significant, doesn't mean it's not relevant, or whatever.

I'm not sure how closely related it is to the Swedish-only concept of Exhaustion disorder, which explicitly includes ME/CFS, but I'd say it's pretty fair to say it very much is:

Burnout was assessed with the Burnout Assessment Tool; NSPD, with the K6; and exhaustion, with the Karolinska Exhaustion Disorder Scale

And speaking of Exhaustion disorder, here's a recent study from Sweden with many quotes from physicians who pretty much admit that the whole concept is entirely useless, and that none of the preferred treatments, which are all some form of CBT with various attempts at motivating to be happy, or whatever, work at all: https://www.s4me.info/threads/physicians’-experiences-of-assessing-and-supporting-fatigued-patients-in-primary-care-a-focus-group-study-2025-samuelsson.44615/.

 

[Utsikt]

«We should stop attributing burnout to work because few patients attribute it to work».

I wonder if Lindsäter will apply the same logic to ME/CFS?

 

[Trish]

I wonder how much these comparisons between disorders is a artefact of questionnaire design. Studies based purely on questionnaires appear to me to be pointless.

 

[Sean]

Studies based purely on questionnaires appear to me to be pointless.

Seriously misleading even.

Though no doubt they are cheap and easy to do.

 

[BrightCandle]

The challenge is first to identify a condition that you don't know how to test you first have to group people by symptoms and apparently how they started to suffer the condition and then come up with a working clinical identification to conduct research on a patient group. The problem is usually the jump straight to CBT and exercise as the solution to the condition. Unless something is really obvious like ebola or similar where we have clear physical symptoms that we can see I don't really see another way to start to identify the patient group to then start looking into what differs biologically. Its all the presumptions its the patients fault and mental illness that is the issue not necessarily the questionaries. But at some point once you have a group then the biology work needs to start and every time these psychology groups seem to delay the proper research from beginning.