The Evolution of Representations about the Syndrome of Emotional Burnout

Abstract

Introduction: the study of burnout syndrome intensifies over time. In 2020, MEDLINE/PubMed database contains more than 18,000 publications on this phenomenon. In its development, the concept of burnout has passed through several heterogeneous periods. Objective: to provide the description of the origin and development of the burnout concept, the features of the social environment within which this syndrome was actualized, and the current state of this problem. Material and methods: publications on the burnout syndrome were analyzed. The search was performed using the keywords “burnout”, “history” in the MEDLINE/PubMed, eLIBRARY, and Google Scholar databases. The “snowball” method was used to search for publications in the literature lists of relevant studies. Results: the phenomena similar to burnout were registered long before the start of its academic study. The initiation of scientific research on burnout occurred mainly due to global social changes associated with the increasing role of social professions and the increasing burden on workers employed in them. The results of the analysis of publications made it possible to distinguish several stages of burnout studying, which differed in the methodology of empirical research, the range of subjects included in the risk group for this phenomenon, and the number of competing psychological models of burnout. Despite the growing number of papers on burnout, issues related to the clinical status of this syndrome, its discriminant validity, methods of its prevention and coping are still relevant. The effectiveness of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of burnout can be flawed by excessive expansion of the concept and loss of its substantiveness.