What is the difference between burnout and depression?
Depression and work burnout can be more easily distinguished because depression is a general hopelessness that pervades all areas of your life, while work burnout would only be related to work and the causes would therefore be different for example overwork, lack of autonomy, unfair treatment and values conflicts. If these conditions changed the burnout would ease whereas depression would not necessarily change. Burnout will not necessarily be solved quickly or with a vacation because the workplace conditions need to change or the employee has to establish new boundaries around their time and workload and this is why coaches are so important.
In Freundenberger and North's 12 stages of burnout, depression is stage 11, so the two can overlap. And suicide ideation is a potential symptom of burnout. Depression is diagnosed and treated by a clinician, whereas because workplace burnout is defined by the WHO as an occupational phenomenon not an illness, it is not diagnosed in the same way. Some of the symptoms of burnout, for example tired but wired and resentful, do not match with the lack of energy and despair of depression. Often people do not know they are burned out until some physical symptom stops them in their tracks, like an illness, extreme fatigue or panic attacks.
Another challenge is for working moms who might be experiencing workplace burnout and parental burnout. Then their feelings are in more than one sphere of life and can be harder to distinguish from depression. Parental burnout is related to shame and lack of enjoyment in the role and a change in that perception. An important tool here is reducing stressors ie. finding more realistic expectations and increasing resources i.e. asking for help or paying for help.
Another trait that is related to both workplace burnout and parental burnout is perfectionism. And if you take this expectation into multiple spheres of your life including, work, home, relationships etc. it can, like depression, pervade all areas of your life. And even if you do change jobs, the same issues can arise even in more supportive environments. That's again why it is so important to work with a coach on reducing unrealistic expectations. And why employers need to support their over achievers with upper limits on work. Often we set minimal standards without defining over work.
I experienced work and parental burnout, I was crying on the way to work and on the way home. I changed my job and got therapy and coaching because I experienced suicide ideation. I was never diagnosed or treated for depression. While research shows exercise and meditation can help you manage the symptoms of stress and reduce depressive symptoms, burnout is chronic stress. And moms during the pandemic found their usual sources of stress management were less effective. I exercise daily which I think allowed me to manage a lot more stress than others, but ultimately it was not sustainable.
I suggest multi-level solutions for working mom burnout, coaching as an individual, systems like Fairplay in the home, workplace policies around reducing the maternal wall and motherhood penalty, and government legislation around paid leave and subsidized childcare. These would be more permanent solutions to the chronic stress that mothers experience in today's society.
I would be happy to talk more about this as it is such an important topic and solutions for moms will ultimately benefit society as a whole.
Another feature of burnout that may not be present in depression, is that when physicians are burned out they demonstrate more racial bias. Bias is hardwired into our brains and overcoming it requires more mental effort. When we are burned out, our brains don't have the same capacity to moderate bias. This to me is another hugely important reason to reduce burnout, especially since workplace injustice (like bias) is already a condition for burnout.
