Psychology

Discuss the factors of burnout in adults

Burnout has been on the increase among adults working in the health service sector. Studies done show that this group has a high prevalent rate and that the group that shows the highest prevalent rate is the one that works in child health care. In the study focused in this paper, interviewees with high scores on perception of conscience, morality sensitivity suffered from burnout due to stress. In addition, those who lacked social support and resilience showed high levels of stress and eventual burnout. The other group was non-burnout yet working under the same conditions. This group had high level of resilience, support from their colleagues and coped well with the stressful situation in the workplace. Thus, from the study some of the factors that contribute to adult burnout were discovered.

The world has become increasingly competitive and this has led to increased levels of stress at the workplace. This stress leads to burnout which results from job dissatisfaction, emotional exhaustion and negative attitude towards ones colleagues and job. Burnout refers to a situation in which a person wears out, or fails due to exhaustion to excessive demands to resources, energy or strength (Kahill, 1988). Burnout is highly prevalent among human service practitioners. Studies show that adults in childcare professionals have higher levels of burnout (Jenaro, Flores  Arias, 2007). It will be argued stress in the workplace causes burnout in adults. This paper will look at the factors that cause burnout in adults in the human services sector in a case study done among twenty Swedish healthcare personnel.

Job demands refers to all the aspects of a job that entail mental or physical effort, which is connected with psychological and physiological cost like exhaustion. Research shows that individuals who have high job demands that they are unable to meet often develop stress, which eventually leads to burnout. People working in the health service sector are more prone to stress due to the nature of their job that is emotionally involving (Elliott et al, 1996). On the other hand, we have job resources- the social, physical or psychological aspects surrounding the work.  When job resources are scarce workers become stressed because they are unable to do their tasks effectively hence cannot serve their clients well no matter how long they spend at work (Elliott et al, 1996). Eventually stress builds up and the workers exhibit burnout when stress saturates. 

Emotional exhaustion (EE) meaning tiredness leads to stress which eventually causes burnout. After working for a long in the human service sector one becomes emotionally drained studies as shown by studies (Elliott et al, 1996). In addition, Personal accomplishment (PA) referring to reduced feelings of competence and achievement may also cause stress especially when a person has not achieved success in their work for a long time. They tend to have reduced personal accomplishment and do not feel good about their work anymore. This often leads to depersonalization (DP) that is irritability or impersonal feelings and a person becomes detached form their work. Studies show that such a person may have high cases of absenteeism

To look at the factors that contribute to burnout in adults this paper shall look at a study conducted among some Swedish healthcare personnel. The personnel were grouped into burnout on sick leave (20 women) and non-burnout (17 women and 3 men) those at work. They were engaged in interviews and later filled two questionnaires. The questionnaires they filled were self-reporting were the Stress of Conscience Questionnaire (SCQ), the Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire Revised (MSQ-R), the Social InteractionsScale (SocIS) and the Resilience Scale (RS (Gustafsson, Eriksson, Strandberg  Norberg, 2010). Moreover, they filled Cattells Sixteen Personality Factors Questionnaire (Gustafsson, et al, 2010, p.25).  Those who were on sick leave filled questionnaires and were requested to provide details about their feelings while they were a work before they took the sick leave.

Findings by Gustafsson, et al, 2010 Jenaro, Flores  Arias, 2007 Ulla, Demenrouti, Bergstrom, Asberg  Nygren, 2008 show that when an adult is unable to meet the work demands, they suffer from stress, which eventually leads to burnout . On the other hand, not all people are affected by the conditions at the workplace. This is because some people do not suffer burnout even after being exposed to stressing conditions at the work place. Thus, other factors outside the workplace also contribute to burnout according to Gustafsson, et al (2010). The perception of conscience can also be a contributing factor to burnout especially among health providers. People who are in touch with their conscience are aware of what happens at their places of work and are in a better position to express their feelings. Such people therefore are more likely to feel troubled when things in the workplace are not working properly and develop stress due to reduced (PA) (Gustafsson, et al, 2010 Juthberg, Eriksson, Norberg  Sundin, 2007). This stress eventually leads to burnout.

Moral sensitivity is another factor that causes stress that results in burnout. Researches show that people in this sector are in contact with people going through various types of suffering and this affects them as they develop stress from seeing the sufferings. A long time exposure to the stressful situations often leads to burnout. The study show that  the burnout group has higher levels of stress because they understand the suffering their patients are going through and when they are unable to help them to stop the suffering they feel as if they have not done all they could have done and tend to experience (EE). This is because of moral sensitivity that makes them aware of their conscience, which in turn makes them concerned about the welfare of their patients and others. In addition, some of the practitioners are so caught up in their work that they lack time to attend to their personal lives. This leads to stress at home due to lack of work life balance and hence burnout. Furthermore, people suffer from burnout because they are unable to separate themselves from the happenings in their surroundings (Kukla, 2002 Glasberg, Eriksson  Dahlqvist, 2006).

Lack of resilience also contributes to burnout. This comes about because people who have resilience are able to cope with stressful situations unlike those who lack resilience. The later group is put down by stressful situations that occur in their workplaces. They suffer from all the negative effects of stress that they are unable to handle in their day-to-day lives. Sometimes they worry too much about the things that they have no control over. These people lack the strength to do what they can do well because they walk around feeling defeated and thus fail to do even the things they can do  and suffer from (DP) (Gustafsson, et al, 2010). The non-burnout group has higher resilience and thus able to avoid burnout from situations that make affect the burnout group.

Lack of social support also leads to burnout. This is because one becomes stressed if they do get support from their colleagues. Those participants who exhibited burnout had lower scores than those who did not exhibit burnout because they had stress due to lack of support. The people who have support from their colleagues are less likely to suffer from burnout as they have less stress at work. On the other hand, studies show that those who provide support for their colleagues also suffer from stress being offering support is complicated (Edward  hercelinskyj, 2007).

Studies show that the human service sector is challenging. The professionals in the field join it thinking that it will be all fun once they start their job. However, once they begin working they realize that things are not exactly, as they had anticipated. They become frustrated once they encounter some of their clients who are very demanding, ungrateful and unwilling to bear responsibility. This makes the health service professionals to become stressed and may result in burnout. Thus, we can say that disillusionments stemming from stress may lead to burnout at the long run (Sundin, Hochwalder, Bildt  Lisspers 2007).

In another study conducted in the sports world it is clear that lack of motivation also leads to burnout. This is especially evident in the sports world. Sports persons who lack motivation have high levels of burnout. When they fail accomplish their objectives they become stressed which leads to burnout. On the other hand, sports persons who feel out of control have high levels of stress. In addition, those who join sports out of obligation and not because they love sports have high levels of stress. Thus if one does not have the right motivation for engaging in an activity they may fail to succeed at it because they are not doing it for the love of doing it rather out of an exterior reason such as money and are in the burnout group (Goodger, Gorely, Lavallee  Harwood, 2007).

Conversely, some studies show that stress is useful in the workplace as it may lead to personal development. This is because the right amount of stress is useful in enabling a person to work hard in order to achieve their goals thus not necessarily causing burnout.  The critics say that burnout is simply boredom that is coined to camouflage crisis in the workplace. This is because stress in the work place is usually specific and is temporary unlike clinical depression. These critics go on to say people who are unable to cope at the work place are simply socially isolated. Furthermore, some individuals are able to cope with the job demands well due to their personality such as high resilience. Some are able to deal with the scarce resources available and still manage to work while others fail to do so and end up suffering from burnout (Morrice, 1984).

Finally, people in the human service sector, as the study show experience burnout more than people in other professionals do. This is because of the kind of services they offer to their clients.  The burnout group experiences stress due to a number of factors at the work place that they usually have no control over. It is therefore important to understand the causes of burnout as it ahs a major effect on people in the human service sector.