has cleared a huge doubt in my mind. This morning The Telegraph, Calcutta, has an article, ‘Life as we know it’, and Dani Blum clears the confusion between ‘burnout’ and ‘depression’. While both show many similar symptoms, they are different and we would do well to understand this so that we can ask for the help we need.
Burnout: while we usually connect this with the workplace, increasingly it is being found out by researchers that there is parental burnout, where caregivers feel exhausted all the time. There is also the burnout that’s been brought on by working out of home. After the initial feeling of comfort of working from home, and maybe even increased productivity, people are realizing that because they are working from home, they are tending to put in longer hours. Now, psychologists are warning of burnout happening because workers feel like they don’t have control over their day-to-day lives, often getting bogged down by a thousand little tasks.
The symptoms of burnout are feelings of depletion, cynicism, resentment, irritability, and ineffectiveness.
Healthcare workers, workers in the service sector, and those in retail industry, who suffer burnout start to lose empathy.
There are also physical symptoms to deal with—insomnia, headaches, and gastrointestinal issues.
The World Health Organisation includes burnout in its diagnostic manual as an ‘occupational phenomenon’.
Depression on the other hand is a clinical diagnosis. Activities, books, and movies, among other things, that a person enjoyed start to seem tedious, and downright hateful.
While with burnout you don’t have energy for your hobbies, with depression they seem unpleasant and not fun anymore.
While the initial symptoms of both may seem the same, a person can bounce back from burnout by taking a day off or with small changes in lifestyle, but depression causes people to think they are worthless and life is not worth living.
We also need to start putting the ‘screen’ be it of the phone, ipad, computer, laptop, or tv, in its rightful place in our lives…give it the importance it needs, but not our lives… periods of quietness away from the light of the screen help regain equilibrium.
Both issues need help and it would be best for our own sakes to get the help we need and not try to fix these issues ourselves.
I lost a dear friend to depression, and I would not wish anyone to go through this. I was headed this way when my daughter hauled me out…..
At the slightest hint of fear either from burnout or depression, we need to reach out for help.