Burnout and stress: Between medicalization and psychologization

Abstract

In 1974, the concept of burnout was created to express the exhaustion typical of helping professions. Generally defined as a psychological syndrome resulting from chronic occupational stress, it is composed by three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization/ cynicism, and low personal accomplishment. This article analyzes burnout from a sociocultural perspective, based on the theoretical frameworks of Loriol/Elias and Duarte/Dumont, investigating its diffusion by means of a conceptual association with the idea of work stress, which may also be associated to the processes of individualization and medicalization/ psychologization. Despite its origins in the physical sciences, the category “stress” owes its strength less to its technical (theoretic) character than to its symbolic aspect. By promoting a common language between biologization and psychologization, the category stress is present in many different environments, from academic discussions to common sense conversation, integrating in a particular code psychologized and non-psychologized representations of the person and of physical and moral distress. It can therefore serve as a “biopsychosocial” category. These characteristics pave the way to burnout’s social diffusion, as far as it is conceived as a type of work stress – an experience that, nowadays, is regarded as part of normal life.