Psychiatrists Describe Dangers in Physician ‘Burnout’ Becoming Catchall Term for Emotional Distress

Despite ongoing efforts by health care systems and professional medical organizations to create tools and practices to decrease physician burnout, physician depression and suicide prevention remain “relatively ignored,” wrote psychiatrists Maria A. Oquendo, M.D., Ph.D., Carol A. Bernstein, M.D., and Laurel E. S. Mayer, M.D., in anarticle appearing today inJAMA Psychiatry.The authors described several factors that may contribute to the imbalance between attention paid to physician burnout versus major depressive disorder, including the ongoing stigma of mental illness and its treatment: “[T]he term burnout, which indicates a human reaction to something outside oneself, is less stigmatized [than major depressive disorder],” they wrote. This has allowed it “to become a catchall term for emotional distress experienced by physicians.”Additionally, many symptoms of burnout overlap with symptoms of major depressive disorder (MDD), they noted. “The shifting definition of burnout, in concert with the overlap with psychiatric symptoms, sets the stage for a situation in which burnout can be invoked and a treatable diagnosis missed,” they wrote. “As a result, a physician dutifully completing a burnout screening inventory for self-evalua tion, as now recommended by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, could easily conclude that she or he has burnout rather than MDD.” Such missed opportunities may prevent or delay treatments, putting the physician i...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: Carol Bernstein depression JAMA Psychiatry Laurel Mayer major depressive disorder Maria Oquendo MDD mental illness stigma physician burnout Source Type: research