{"id":6253,"date":"2025-06-22T21:05:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-22T21:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/6253\/"},"modified":"2025-06-22T21:05:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-22T21:05:08","slug":"burnout-might-not-actually-be-a-work-problem-after-all-study-shows-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/6253\/","title":{"rendered":"Burnout Might Not Actually Be a Work Problem After All, Study Shows : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

When we hear the term “burnout”, most of us would think about working long hours<\/a>, and the stress built up<\/a> from our jobs and the people involved in them. However, a surprising new study suggests that only a minority of people with burnout actually think their symptoms are due to their work.<\/p>\n

The research, which was led by a team from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), could challenge the conventional thinking about how people reach burnout, and how we might be able to protect against it.<\/p>\n

Less than 30 percent of the people surveyed blamed their job as the primary reason they felt burnt out.<\/p>\n

The researchers suggest a broader range of factors and pressures in everyday life are often behind burnout, not just what’s happening at work.<\/p>\n

“People who experience burnout describe stress in their daily lives which leads to a form of depression<\/a>,” says<\/a> psychologist Renzo Bianchi, from NTNU. “You could call it depressive stress in life.”<\/p>\n

\"EmailA little over a quarter of participants said work was a primary driver of burnout. (Brian J. Tromp\/Unsplash<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The research involved 813 employees in Norway, some of whom had reported feelings of burnout. The scientists compared what participants perceived as contributing factors to burnout, exhaustion, and non-specific psychological distress. <\/p>\n

Burnout tended to have the strongest link with job variables, but some work-related factors like job security and colleague support were more closely associated with general psychological stress<\/a> than with burnout, the data showed.<\/p>\n

Intriguingly, only 27.7 percent of participants with burnout symptoms said they thought work was the main reason they felt burned out.<\/p>\n

This isn’t the only study<\/a> where the majority of people with burnout have said work isn’t the primary cause, either. The researchers note that burnout and its triggers can work differently for everyone.<\/p>\n

“For people with a more anxious personality, worries and stress can drain a lot of energy, without it necessarily being solely about their job,” says<\/a> Bianchi.<\/p>\n

“I think it is important to conduct more research on this, and especially on what impact personality has. Constantly worrying about what could go wrong is exhausting.”<\/p>\n

The World Health Organization<\/a> describes burnout<\/a> as “chronic workplace stress” with three dimensions: exhaustion or a lack of energy, increased distance from or negativity towards work, and behavior that’s less professional.<\/p>\n

Definitions involving work have in fact been around since the term “burnout” was first coined by US psychologist Herbert Freudenberger<\/a>. Originally, it was applied to people in caregiving professions, before being expanded to all types of jobs.<\/p>\n

Those definitions may need a rethink, the researchers behind this latest study suggest \u2013 not just so that we can better recognize burnout<\/a> and its symptoms, but also so that we can improve ways of dealing with it. Focusing on the work environment won’t make much of a difference if the burnout has little to do with work to begin with.<\/p>\n

Burning out can negatively affect physical and mental health in a whole host of ways<\/a>, and of course can be driven by work in some cases \u2013 but also by family, health, or financial issues, according to the researchers.<\/p>\n

The researchers mention job security, coworker support, and self-determination as ways of minimizing the risk of burnout at work, as well as finding a career doing something you love \u2013 if you’re fortunate enough to be able to.<\/p>\n

“Not everyone is as fortunate to love their job, and as a result, have the capacity to tolerate more stress at work,” says<\/a> Bianchi. “But it is important to find a meaningful job and then put in the work needed to succeed.”<\/p>\n

The research has been published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When we hear the term “burnout”, most of us would think about working long hours, and the stress…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[210,517,352,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-6253","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-msft-content","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114729053997680965","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}