As I said, we tend to think of burnout as affecting doctors, teachers, office workers. Now, forced productivity or not feeling a sense of purpose at a day job are just two of the reasons. On the contrary, many people are doing work they consider more important than ever. Many of us have been cut off from the people and activities that gave our life meaning before.
But more than a year on, says Torsten Voigt, a sociologist at RWTH Aachen University in Germany who has researched burnout, this initial expenditure of energy may be catching up with us. People in lower-paid jobs are in fact at particular risk of burnout, precisely because they are given less resources and less support.
The world in which burnout was initially conceived was quite different to the one we live and work in today. The gig economy, automation, smartphones, zoom calls have transformed the way many of us work. Though the World Health Organisation has not defined burnout as an occupational disease, the symptoms of burnout have become medical. Living through the pandemic has been making us sick.
Any primary-care doctor will tell you that the physical-health toll of collective trauma — high blood pressure, headaches, herniated discs — have become quite common. And this has been before many people have returned to the office or resumed their pre-pandemic schedules. The mental-health crisis of the pandemic is also very real.
According to research by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a staggering four in 10 adults reported symptoms of anxiety and depression, a quadrupling of the pre-pandemic rate.
More than one in four mothers reported that the pandemic has had a major impact on their mental health. I do not suppose that people in Malta have been spared the crisis, though the percentages may be different.
This may be little comfort to those suffering, but this moment may pose an opportunity to rethink our roles at work and to reconsider our relationship with work — not just on an individual level, but on a societal one.
Addressing burnout in a systemic way could mean reducing workloads, redistributing resources, or rethinking workplace hierarchies. One suggestion, is to give people more autonomy in their roles so that they can play to their individual strengths — fitting the job around the person rather than making a person fit into the job. But it could also mean grappling with broader inequalities, in the workplace and beyond.
This could mean improving a toxic company culture, adapting parental leave and childcare policies, or introducing more flexible working. It could be offering more social support to parents and carers. It could mean making sure everyone has decent working rights and a living wage. Making system changes is difficult. Feeling like a zombie. Frans Camilleri 6 min. Same Author Economy. Frans Camilleri posted yesterday. Notify of. Inline Feedbacks. Most Read. Politics Vying for the centre-ground Jacob Callus posted today.
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