Burnout in America: Then and Now

The history of burnout dates back to the 1970s when it first became mainstream after being featured in Bob Dylan’s song “Shelter from the Storm.” The lyrics resonated with undergraduate students, post-graduate students, and even those well-established in their careers.

As the emergence of burnout came to the forefront in the early 1970s, it marked a "critical transition point in the history of work in America." Before this, burnout was branded as "increased productivity" for workers to earn wage increases. As for college students, it created a hierarchical system and an extremely competitive culture. Both toxic and unhealthy.

In the 1970s, Herbert Freudenberger, a psychologist based in New York, worked 10 hours a day in his private practice and would then head downtown to work at a Free Clinic, assisting the young people of East Village with everything from drug addiction to dental cavities. Freudenberger was strongly committed to helping those at the clinic, writing, “Their problems, their battles, became mine.” 

Even after the clinic closed, he and the volunteer staff would hold meetings to discuss the issues and bettering their clinic for their patients. He would continue to do this every business day, for about a year, until he broke down. His daughter, Lisa, recounted him being unable to get out of bed the morning the family was supposed to leave for vacation. Freudenberger was experiencing burnout at its core.

The term burnout had already been circulating in the professional world. But to fully understand what happened to him, Freudenberger performed psychoanalytic training on himself. By 1974, he went on to publish a paper on burnout in an academic journal, describing the cause of burnout to be "feeling the pressure from within to work and help and ... a pressure from the outside to give." In addition, he added his list of burnout symptoms including exhaustion, being unable to shake a lingering cold, suffering from frequent headaches, gastrointestinal disturbances, sleeplessness, and shortness of breath.

Basically, burnout was everywhere and anything could be burnout.

Before the 1970s, those who had mental breaks that were due to burnout called them nervous breakdowns or collective sadness. It even led to former President Jimmy Carter ending the decade by diagnosing the whole country with a chronic spiritual sickness that became known as the "malaise speech." The former president himself had been faced with burnout.

By the early 1980s, burnout had become a key term to describe frazzled, defeated workers who were in dire need of emotional support. The 1980s were only four decades ago, as we reside in the 2020s. The nation still faces a deathly quiet battle against burnout. 

Burnout is now recognized as a "syndrome" but not an illness as per the World Health Organization compendium of diagnoses. While Americans were the first to recognize burnout, other countries such as Sweden have implemented support for sufferers such as paid sick leave and other sickness benefits. 

America has yet to do so.

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Article summary and research provided by one of our interns, Jaia.