| dc.description.abstract | Introduction: Burnout is a pathological syndrome in response to prolonged, chronic, interpersonal and occupational stress. In current literature, burnout is often defined by three core components, namely 1) emotional exhaustion 2) feelings of cynicism and detachment from the job (depersonalization) and 3) a sense of ineffectiveness, reduced efficacy and lack of accomplishment/competence. PTSD is a psychiatric disorder caused by exposure to an acute traumatic event, or by acute and chronic stressors of an extreme nature. In symmetry, burnout is also a response to stressors yet is limited to a professional context. Nevertheless, this does not exclude the possibility of overlapping symptoms with PTSD. Furthermore, in a unique environment as that of the military deployed, stressors which may lead to symptoms of PTSD and/or burnout could possibly be resulting from the same work-related (traumatic) events. The current study examines the question whether burnout symptoms, as a result of work-related stressors, serve as a risk factor in military personnel during deployment towards developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at a later stage. First we investigated the occurrence of work-related stressors and whether burnout symptoms increase after deployment. Next, we analyzed whether these symptoms correlate to PTSD and its symptoms. Following which, we examined each subscale of burnout and its predictive nature towards developing PTSD in the future.
Methods: This study was part of a large-scale longitudinal study, the PRISMO study, concerning deployment related illnesses in Dutch soldiers. Symptoms of burnout were measured by the Dutch version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and PTSD was measured by the Self-Rating Inventory for PTSD manual (SRIP). Data for measuring burnout was collected three times, whereas PTSD was repeatedly measured four times. The total time-frame for these measurements span approximately 5 years. The cross-lagged associations between the studied variables were investigated by applying statistical procedures.
Results: The frequency of burnout symptoms increased after deployment amongst Dutch military personnel. We found signification associations for all subscales of burnout with the PTSD measurements. Noteworthy is the strong association found between the burnout symptom exhaustion and the diagnosis of PTSD. We also found a strong overlap between the burnout symptom exhaustion and the PTSD symptom ‘Arousal’ as well as a moderate correlation score with the PTSD symptom ‘Avoidance’.
Conclusion: We found that burnout symptoms can increase the vulnerability towards developing PTSD, and thus supports the important role of adapting interventions after deployment in order to detect and reduce burnout symptoms as well as the monitoring and treating the possible development or existence of PTSD. | |
