We’ve all been there – wired on coffee, exhausted, struggling to alimony pace with hurdles and deadlines, surpassing hitting the inevitable brick wall. When can we identify a state of “burnout”, and what does psychology have to say well-nigh it? We asked DR JOSEPH LEONG and DR SEAN DAVID from Promises Healthcare well-nigh this as current mental health issue.
What does stuff “burnout” midpoint in a clinical context?
Joe: Vacuum is an occupational phenomenon. It’s not classified as a medical condition but conceptualised as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterised by feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental loftiness from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or pessimism related to one’s job; and reduced professional efficiency.
While we recognise that students and homemakers can moreover suffer similar anxieties, vacuum refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be unromantic to describe experiences in other areas of life. Sean: American social psychologist Christina Maslach, who is well known for her research on occupational burnout, stated: “What started out as important, meaningful and challenging work becomes unpleasant, unfulfilling and meaningless. Energy turns into exhaustion, involvement turns into cynicism, and efficacy turns into ineffectiveness.”
The behavioural manifestations of vacuum may be procrastination on tasks; “presenteeism” at work, which is when a person is present at work while they’re disengaged or unwell; sleep and want disturbances, or plane maladaptive coping methods such as increased smoking and drinking.
If vacuum is not addressed early or adequately, it can lead to other mental health issues including major depression, uneasiness disorders or plane escalate to the severity of suicidality or illicit drug use. This will inadvertently have a profound impact on the woeful person’s social and family life.
Is there treatment for burnout? What “work hygiene” or mental habits can be cultivated to help alimony our cogs turning?
Sean: The first step is to recognise when one has reached a stage of burnout, and not skim whispered their inability to function due to just “stress”. Increasing sensation of the warning signs of impending vacuum and avenues of help internally within one’s company, and externally using polity resources or virtual self-help is important. Psycho-education reduces the stigma associated with seeking help for mental health conditions.
The second step is to analyse the specific causes of vacuum for that unique person’s life situation. There are systemic and individual factors that can predispose, precipitate and perpetuate burnout.
The third and most crucial step is to take whoopee and make lifestyle changes in vibrations with the identified root causes of burnout.
Prescribed medications by doctors to aid sleep or relieve uneasiness may moreover be abused. This can result in addiction. The first step is sensation that this could happen to anyone despite the weighing that one knows their limits.
Joe: Some people cope by drinking, smoking or taking some pills to solve their “ills”. These coping strategies may temporarily relieve distress but are not healthy long term and can do increasingly harm than good.
What distinguishes a unmistakably towardly medical-use specimen from an haunting dependency on prescribed medication?
Joe: Chronic distress should be managed in a holistic way rather than self-medicating. Seeing a therapist or a counsellor to learn new skills or transpiration one’s thinking would be helpful.
Appropriate medication use is within the doctor’s prescription weighing the indication, benefits, alternatives and risk of using or not using.
One should be honest with the use of medications and not doctor-hop or collect various medications from variegated doctors without revealing what was given by flipside doctor. Bringing all the medications during the consult will help in zippy use of the medication and reduce the dependency on medications.
How can employers instil and facilitate largest mental health practices? How can we negotiate healthier working styles with our bosses and colleagues?
Joe: I recommend a frank discussion well-nigh what is working well and what is not. A person will do well with tasks where he or she is strong and interested in doing them, whereas other tasks may rationalization too much distress and dysfunction.
Sean: Fostering a positive and supportive working environment is encouraged, for example, permitting employees to have autonomy over their job scopes. Trusting them to make towardly flexible work arrangements, expressly if they are parents or care-givers, can ensure largest work life wastefulness and happier employees.
Encouraging an unshut discussion with employers well-nigh work strengths and weaknesses can moreover result in a largest typecasting of suitable work tasks. Employers can distribute responsibilities fairly at work and put in place multisource feedback channels to alimony the effectiveness of work policies in check.
Finally, reminders from visitor HR for employees to use up their yearly leave benefits instead of the repetitive trundling of delivering forward leave may ensure that employees take unobjectionable rest in the work year to recuperate.
Seeking help for “being stressed at work” might seem outlandish to some. What can you share with readers to transpiration their mind?
Joe: Think well-nigh it as executive coaching or career counselling. If the job is not a good fit and has caused physical, emotional, psychological and social distress and dysfunction, waffly to flipside department or a largest job may be a largest outcome in the long term.
Sean: Seeking help is not a sign of mental weakness but instead a unvigilant whoopee taken by you to see a change, and find fruitful meaning in life.
In the words of BKS Iyengar, “Change is not something that we should fear. Rather, it is something that we should welcome. For without change, nothing in this world would overly grow or floweret and no one in this world would overly move forward to wilt the person they’re meant to be.”
Three Steps Out of Burnout
#1 Recognise when you’ve reached a stage of burnout, instead of brushing whispered your inability to function due to just “stress”.
#2 Analyse the specific causes of vacuum for your own life situation. There are systemic and individual factors that can predispose, precipitate and perpetuate burnout.
#3 The most crucial step is to take whoopee and make lifestyle changes in vibrations with the identified root causes of burnout.
About PROMISES
Promises Healthcare is a multidisciplinary mental health clinic with a team of psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists and executive coaches (and a rehabilitation physician) who take on a diverse and multidisciplinary tideway to treatment. Superintendency and wellbeing of patients is at the heart of the service, and treatments are based on the latest clinically proven protocols in the field of neuroscience and psychology.
Dr Joseph Leong believes that recovery is possible for anyone. He looks vastitude finding the weightier combination of medications to recommending talk therapy and psycho-social rehabilitation and polity partnerships.
Dr Sean David Vanniasingham is experienced in unstipulated psychiatry, tendency medicine, and neurostimulation treatment. He is a firm parishioner in the biopsycho-social model tideway in the holistic and recovery-oriented superintendency of his patients.
Visions by Promises is the addictions treatment arm of Promises Healthcare, providing recuperative superintendency programmes such as one-on-one counselling, group therapy, an intensive outpatient program, specialist groups, family therapy and medical detox.
Promises Healthcare is at #09-23, #09-18 & #11-16 Novena Medical Center, 10 Sinaran Drive.
6397 7309 | promises.com.sg
This vendible first appeared in the October 2022 edition of Expat Living. You can purchase the latest issue or subscribe, so you never miss a copy!
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