Physician Burnout is Better Conceptualised as Depression

Authors

Bianchi Renzo, Université de Neuchâtel
Irvin Sam Schonfeld, CUNY Graduate CenterFollow
Eric Laurent, Université Bourgogne - Franche-Comté

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2017

Abstract

Ronald Epstein and Michael Privitera reported that burnout affects more than half of practising physicians. The authors additionally warned against confusing burnout with depression. For two reasons we are concerned with the validity of these conclusions. First, there is now robust evidence that burnout is a depressive condition. Second, the published estimates of burnout’s prevalence rely on clinically groundless criteria, cobbled together without any rationale.

Comments

This work was originally published in The Lancet, available at doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(17)30897-8