Preventing Burnout

By Alan Dovey - Consultant Psychotherapist

According to the World Health Organization, burnout is a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterised by feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job, and a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment[i].

The importance of distinguishing burnout from depression, despite overlapping symptoms is paramount ‘The ‘journey’ is key. It’s really important that we don’t just look at the end game – the person sitting in front of you – and think that because they are burned out, they must be depressed. It is different.

We should always let the client go through their journey, tell their narrative so we can see how they moved from doing really well, getting all the dopamine hits from their work, all the positive feedback then suddenly, at some point, tipping over into fatigue. And at that point, when fatigue kicks in, anxiety kicks in because they start to get afraid of not being able to do their job and support their family.

Thoughts begin to intrude “I’m letting myself down, my colleagues down”

Over compensatory behaviour begins- the person works even harder at managing their workload and symptoms of fatigue until symptoms become unbearable.

The good news…………

Burnout is a ‘process’  and this creates opportunities to identify risk early and to intervene before people become ill.

Referring to the 1908 Yerkes-Dobson curve, which charts the relationship between arousal and performance, it is ‘biologically impossible’ to maintain so-called optimal performance for weeks/months and even years on end and that ‘we need to be picking people up before they tip over into fatigue, exhaustion, ill health and burnout.’ Ironically, ‘there is a point where, just before people tip over, they are actually doing well.’

Once someone develops burnout the only option is rehabilitation, which can mean lengthy sickness absence.

 “The theoretical assumption we are working with is that we need to be picking people up before the tipping point,”

Dovey and Swift (2025) worked on the premise that they could introduce early mental health surveillance for employees at risk of burnout ‘to help them stay well’. A short period of ‘downtime’ can be restorative, but if you wait until the employee is burned out ‘you are talking three to six months off sick’.

Swift and Dovey (2025) have created the 15-item Clinical Occupational Psychological – Enhancement Survey (COP-ES). This is a rapid screening tool to assess psychological wellbeing, distress and resilience in an occupational setting.

‘It can tell you who is struggling at the very early stages of pre-burnout”

The COP-ES was developed using research evidence and elements from existing screening tools and concepts, including Martin Seligman’s Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment (PERMA) model of psychological wellbeing and John Arden’s Social connectivity, Exercise, Education, Diet and Sleep (SEEDS).

The COP-ES is designed to identify an employee’s levels of physical wellbeing, psychopathology, satisfaction, meaning and overall psychological health. It includes indicative questions such as: ‘I enjoy socialising with my friends and/or family’; ‘I am sleeping well and waking feeling refreshed’; ‘I have occasional feelings of panic’; ‘I struggle with concentrating or focusing’; and ‘I often take time to exercise or get active’. Each of the 15 question has five Likert-scale answers, ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’. Employees complete the questionnaires based on how they have felt over the previous one to two weeks. It takes around 90 seconds to complete.

The outcome scores are straightforward and can help identify workers who are beginning to struggle and may need further support.

‘It uses a green, amber and red system to determine urgent referrals to OH,’

To date, the tool has been trialled on 240 emergency worker employees and around 200 manufacturing workers.

Alan Dovey, director and consultant psychotherapist at Working Minds UK, has been working with his colleague Michael Swift to develop a rapid psychological health screening tool to identify when workers need additional support to maintain mental wellbeing and prevent burnout.

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[i] ICD-11 for mortality and morbidity statistics. QD85 Burn-out. Geneva: World Health Organization, 2018 (updated 2025). ohaw.co/ICD11burnout