Burnout syndrome of human services professionals--doctors, nurses, caregivers, teachers and clerks (1). Maslach Burnout Inventory: factor structures for samples of human services professionals, and its relation with Zung's Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS)

Abstract

During the past decade, burnout syndrome has been widely discussed not only in the USA but also in Japan. To evaluate the state of "burnout," two major scales are available: the first is the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) developed by C. Maslach and the other is the burnout scale by A. Pines. MBI is suggested to be independent of and incompatible with Pines' burnout scale, but, Pines' burnout scale is predominantly used in Japan, while both are used in the USA. Since hardly any studies of burnout using MBI have been made in Japan, we measured and analyzed MBI to evaluate the burnout state of doctors, nurses, caregivers, teachers and clerks who are engaged in "human services professions." The available data were subjected to factor analysis, reliability analysis and multiple regression analysis using Zung's Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS). The following results were obtained. 1) The factor analysis showed that the factor loading pattern was similar to that of Maslach's, but two different factors were emerged in addition to the standard factors in the intensity subscale. 2) In the relationship with the state of depression, burnout is closely related to depression but simultaneously has its own factors. This suggest that burnout is not a subtype of the depressive state.