Differentiating Burnout from Depression: Personality Matters!

Abstract

Stress-related affective disorders have been identified as a core health problem of the twenty-first century. In the endeavor to identify vulnerability factors, personality has been discussed as a major factor explaining and predicting disorders like depression or burnout. An unsolved question is whether there are specific personality factors allowing differentiation of burnout from depression. The present study tested the relation between one of the most prominent, biological personality theories, Cloninger’s Temperament and Character Inventory, and common measures of burnout (Maslach Burnout Inventory General) and depression (Beck Depression Inventory 2) in a sample of German employees (N = 944) and a sample of inpatients (N = 425). Although the same personality traits (harm avoidance and self-directedness) were predominantly associated with burnout and depression, there was a much stronger association to depression than to burnout in both samples. Besides, we observed specific associations between personality traits and subcomponents of burnout. Our results underline differences in the association of burnout vs. depression to personality, which may mirror differences in scope. While symptoms of depression affect all aspects of life, burnout is supposed to be specifically related to the workplace and its requirements. The much stronger association of personality to depression can be important to select appropriate therapy methods and to develop a more specified treatment for burnout in comparison to depression.

Burnout and depression: Label-related stigma, help-seeking, and syndrome overlap

“…Incidentally, our finding that neuroticism Note -PF ¼ physical fatigue latent factor; CW ¼ cognitive weariness latent factor; EE ¼ emotional exhaustion latent factor; DEP ¼ depression latent factor. and extraversion were each similarly correlated with burnout and depression does not support the view that personality plays a greater role in depression than in burnout (Melchers et al, 2015). Third, the three dimensions of burnout (physical fatigue, cognitive weariness, and emotional exhaustion) were found to be less strongly correlated with each other than with depressive symptoms (Table 4).…”

A five‐sample confirmatory factor analytic study of burnout‐depression overlap

“…In Lindblom et al's () study, carried out in the Swedish working population, the mean correlation among the three subscales of the MBI‐GS was 0.40 whereas the mean correlation of the three subscales of the MBI‐GS with the depression subscale of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale was 0.49. In a recent study of German employees conducted by Melchers, Plieger, Meermann, and Reuter (), the three subscales of the MBI‐GS correlated on average 0.48 with the Beck Depression Inventory‐II and only 0.36 with each other. Such examples could be multiplied.…”

Burnout among anaesthetists in Chinese hospitals: a multicentre, cross‐sectional survey in 6 provinces

“…Burnout commonly occurs among doctors, teachers and police officers, which caused the interest of psychologists and management experts [8,12,14,18,19]. As reported in previous studies, burnout is influenced by various internal or external factors: personality, characteristic or temperament factors [14,19,20]; economic factors; socio-demographic characteristics, such as marriage status, ages, educational background and workload; or psychological climate at work place [11,12,14,[19][20][21][22][23][24].…”