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Burnout is widely seen to have three core symptoms, which the International Classification of Diseases describes as:
- “feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion”;
- “increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job”; and
- “reduced professional efficacy”.
These seem straightforward, but nothing is so simple that people can’t misunderstand it. There are also disagreements about the nature of these symptoms and which ones are truly the “core” of burnout.
It may sound like a dry academic debate, but this really matters! Symptoms are critical to deciding if someone is burned out or experiencing a different condition (e.g., depression). Such decisions influence whether any action will be taken, what it might be, and whether it will help.
So what are the core symptoms of burnout, and where are the areas of confusion and controversy?
Exhaustion: One Symptom to Rule Them All?
Many people assume burnout is just exhaustion. It isn’t! If we get enough rest to recover from tiring experiences, we may not burn out. And when people are really burned out, even a long rest break may not be enough to resolve the condition.
Exhaustion is often the starting point that triggers the other burnout symptoms – but this isn’t always so. Studies have shown that the other burnout symptoms can emerge even before exhaustion sets in.
Mental Distance: Too Many Types?
This symptom has seen the most adjustment and reinvention. It has been labelled depersonalisation, disengagement, and cynicism. These cover phenomena from dissociative detachment to interpersonal disconnection to attitudinal and behavioural withdrawal to distrust. So which is it?
The common thread uniting all of these experiences is detachment. Whether we’re avoiding boring meetings, zoning out by scrolling social media, or telling ourselves that none of it matters anyway, we’re trying to separate ourselves from distress or danger. We don’t always “choose” to detach, but it is a form of coping – and when adopted regularly, it’s quite unhealthy!
Reduced Efficacy: Three’s a Crowd?
Often misinterpreted as ineffective performance, low self-efficacy instead means believing that you lack the capability to achieve something as well as you should. A notable example of how this might present is imposter syndrome. Fittingly, low self-efficacy may itself be an imposter, since doubts have been raised about whether it deserves to be a core symptom of burnout.
Why demote self-efficacy? For starters, evidence shows that exhaustion and cynicism correlate far more strongly with one another than they do with self-efficacy, which also has different patterns of association with other things. Some of this may be measurement artefact: exhaustion and disengagement are measured with negative items (e.g., “I feel tired at the start of the workday”), while self-efficacy tends to be measured using positive items (e.g., “I feel confident I can achieve my goals”) and results are reversed prior to analysis. But there are also indications that people who seek treatment for burnout show fewer professional self-efficacy problems than exhaustion or cynicism problems.
I’m unwilling to discard inefficacy yet, but I think some readjustment is warranted. A common experience of burnout, even among those who still feel professionally capable, is feeling “overwhelmed”. Overwhelm essentially means feeling unable to cope, which I would argue reflects a lack of self-efficacy for coping, rather than for work. So if we broaden inefficacy to include coping self-efficacy, I believe a good case can be made for keeping it as a core symptom of burnout.
But Wait, There’s More!?
The controversy with symptoms doesn’t stop there. Plenty of research in the past decade has indicated that burnout may extend beyond the three core symptoms. But that’s a story for another time!
References
Green, D. E., Walkey, F. H., & Taylor, A. J. W. (1991). The three-factor structure of the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 6, 453-472.
International Classification of Diseases (11th edition). https://icd.who.int/
Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (2008). Early predictors of job burnout and engagement. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 498-512.
Leiter, M. P., & Maslach, C. (2016). Latent burnout profiles: A new approach to understanding the burnout experience. Burnout Research, 3, 89-100.
Schaufeli, W. B., Bakker, A., Schaap, C., Kladler, A., & Hoogduin, C. A. L. (2001). On the clinical validity of the Maslach Burnout Inventory and the Burnout Measure. Psychology & Health, 16, 565 582.
Schaufeli, W. B., & Salanova, M. (2007). Efficacy or inefficacy, that’s the question: Burnout and work engagement, and their relationships with efficacy beliefs. Anxiety, Stress, and Coping, 20, 177-196.
© 2025 Dr Ben J. Searle
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