Burned out – on the ruins of professional ideals

Professional burnout does not only affect doctors, teachers and people working in stressful environments. This is a problem even for people at the threshold of their careers, but who are treated unfairly, overburdened with responsibilities and disappointed, notes Dr. Beata Mankowska of the Institute of Psychology at the University of Gdansk.

Dr. Beata Mankowska writes about what determines that people are susceptible to professional burnout – and how they can be helped, in her book, “The Burnout of the Workforce. “Professional Burnout. Sources, Mechanisms, Prevention.”

Professionals of all professions and ages are vulnerable to burnout syndrome, he explains. This is especially true for young people and those just beginning their careers – full of enthusiasm and professional idealism, which, when juxtaposed with actual requirements and working conditions, “cruelly disappoint.”

“The most significant sources of burnout are organizational factors, that is, not so much the content of work, but its context, including lack of fairness, feelings of loneliness and lack of support, being overloaded with the number of responsibilities, lack of rewards at work, interpersonal conflicts.” – enumerates Dr. Mankowska.

It was once thought that occupational burnout threatens mainly representatives of professions related to contact with and assistance to people: doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers and psychologists. Today, occupational burnout is becoming an increasingly common phenomenon and is a threat to all active professionals.

Difficult working conditions are not enough to burn out – certain personality traits are also conducive to this. More prone to burnout are neurotic, hypersensitive, anxious, tense, low self-esteem, passive, dependent people. Such employees see difficult situations as a threat rather than a challenge. An important determinant of burnout is inflexibility in dealing with stress.

“An accurate diagnosis of burnout is a prerequisite for successful prevention at all levels. However, until the very essence of burnout and the mechanisms of its development are fully understood, and the dispute over definitions and progressive symptoms resolved, it will be difficult to help those already affected by burnout, and even more difficult to prevent its development,” Dr. Mankowska believes.

As he explains, still no unified model has been constructed to explain the phenomenon of professional burnout. Researchers present very divergent concepts in the methodological approach to this phenomenon, as well as its nomenclature.

Dr. Mankowska’s book “Professional Burnout. Sources, Mechanisms, Prevention” presents the perspective of various researchers and describes the mechanisms of development. The author stresses that occupational burnout has been recognized as the biggest threat facing active professionals. Therefore – to protect yourself – it is worth learning about its nature and mechanisms.

Dr. Mankowska is a clinical psychologist. It helps employees overcome the difficulties they face in various positions. It combines practice with theory. In 2012, she defended with distinction her doctoral dissertation titled. “The impact of stressful work conditions, personality traits, and coping styles on social welfare workers’ job burnout.”

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