Welcome to our July 2016 newsletter.
Our newsletter aims to bring you up to date with the services we offer to GPs and their patients throughout Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Birmingham.
BURNOUT
Increasingly lately we have seen a number of clients presenting with symptoms of ‘burnout’. Burnout is “an experience of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion, caused by long-term involvement in situations that are emotionally demanding’’.
Burnout isn’t choosy about who it affects, it has been found to occur most amongst professional people in the caring professions of medicine, nursing, social work, counselling and teaching. Burnout can be associated with the prolonged and cumulative effects of emotional stress and pressure that arise from personal interaction with members of the public on a daily basis.
Burnout is not a simple result of long hours. At Morency we see very able, professional entrepreneurial clients who are ambitious and used to achieving personal goals. Undeniably there are several workplace stressors which can lead down the burnout path but for the majority of our clients it is their high achieving internal drivers and ambitions coupled with societal and technological stressors that contribute to their burnout.
HOW TO SPOT THE SIGNS OF BURNOUT
There are three components to burnout:
Physical and emotional exhaustion
An inability to engage fully with many aspects of a person’s job but, particularly, with those aspects involving interaction. Speech may become flattened and body and facial gestures diminished as the person becomes less responsive to the demands of the situation of a professional interaction. Signs to look out for are chronic fatigue, insomnia, forgetfulness, gastrointestinal pain, increased illness, loss of appetite, anger, depression, anxiety.
Signs of Cynicism and Personal Detachment
A tendency to depersonalise those with whom one is forced to interact so that work colleagues, employees or customers are seen less as individuals and situations become simply part of a routine. Watch for loss of enjoyment, pessimism, isolation and a resistance to socialising, detachment and feelings of disconnection from others.
Lack of personal accomplishment and signs of Ineffectiveness
Individuals will tend to feel little sense of achievement in relation to job and life generally, even if the reality is very different. Here people can suffer with feelings of apathy and hopelessness, increased irritability and lack of productivity and poor performance due to the prolonged chronic stress they experience.
HOW CAN WE HELP?
Burnout is an insidious creature that creeps up on you as you’re living your busy life. If you patients are experiencing some of these symptoms, this should be a wake-up call that they may be on a dangerous path. Our psychologists can work with them to take stock and honestly assess the amount of stress in their life and find ways to reduce it before it’s too late. Burnout isn’t like the flu; it doesn’t go away after a few weeks unless you make some changes in your life. And as hard as that may seem, it’s the smartest thing to do because making a few little changes now will keep you in the race with the energy to get you across the finish line.
Thank you for considering Morency Therapy as the best team to support the mental health of your patients. It continues to be our privilege to provide psychological support to local people.
Dr Julie Hannan
Clinical Director & Chartered Counselling Psychologist
Morency Therapy, The Mill, Radford Road, Alvechurch, Birmingham B48 7LD
Opening Hours
Monday-Friday: 08:30am-8:00pm
Saturday& Sunday: Closed
Tel: 07530 854530 www.morency.co.uk enquiries@morency.co.uk/morency-rooms