Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

When We Say 'Physician Burnout,' We Really Mean Depression, Irvin Sam Schonfeld

Publications and Research

There has been controversy regarding the extent to which burnout overlaps depression. I enumerate eight reasons explaining to why depression is at the heart of burnout. Some of these reasons pertain to the highly similar work-related causes of burnout and depression, burnout adherents' faulty categorical and dimensional conceptualizations of burnout and depression, problematically high correlations between emotional exhaustion (the core of burnout) and depressive symptoms, research on physicians and dentists that underline burnout-depression overlap, and the problem of alexithymia being similarly related to burnout and depression. Suggestions for addressing the problem of burnout-depression among physicians are presented.