Abstract
Job-related distress has been a focal concern in occupational health science. Job-related distress has a well-documented health-damaging and life-threatening character, not to mention its economic cost. In this article, we review recent developments in research on job-related distress and examine ongoing changes in how job-related distress is conceptualized and assessed. By adopting an approach that is theoretically, empirically, and clinically informed, we demonstrate how the construct of burnout and its measures, long favored in research on job-related distress, have proved to be problematic. We underline a new recommendation for addressing job-related distress within the long-established framework of depression research. In so doing, we present the Occupational Depression Inventory, a recently developed instrument devised to assess depressive symptoms that individuals specifically attribute to their work. We close our paper by laying out the advantages of a paradigm shift from burnout to occupational depression.
Highlights
Job-related distress, a focal concern of occupational health science, has well-documented healthdamaging and life-threatening effects, not to mention economic costs
Considerable evidence has accumulated to show that chronic exposure to adverse working conditions contributes to the emergence of depressive symptoms and disorders [1,2,3]
Burnout is thought to reflect the personal impact of chronic exposure to adverse working conditions
Summary
Job-related distress, a focal concern of occupational health science, has well-documented healthdamaging and life-threatening effects, not to mention economic costs. Considerable evidence has accumulated to show that chronic exposure to adverse working conditions contributes to the emergence of depressive symptoms and disorders [1,2,3]. Burnout is thought to reflect the personal impact of chronic exposure to adverse working conditions. Given the common origins of burnout and job-related depressive symptoms and disorders, it is important to examine the evidence bearing on their conceptualization. Burnout is a gauge of job-related distress It consists of three symptom dimensions, the core dimension being (emotional) exhaustion [5]. EE refers to feeling emotionally drained—the result of the worker’s chronic exposure to adverse job conditions. We examine sets of research findings and observations that bear on the conceptualization of job-related distress in the context of the burnout–depression relationship, approached both dimensionally and categorically. We provide a recommendation for assessing job-related distress by way of a new measure that may help occupational health specialists support individuals and organizations more effectively
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