Abstract
The term burnout refers to a phenomenon in the human services that is not new. Over 30 years ago, Schwartz and Will (1969) described essentially the same process as they observed it in a nurse on a psychiatric ward. But they did not call it burnout; instead, they used the term, low morale syndrome. They used terms such as anxiety, guilty and withdrawal. In this chapter, I shall propose that how we label and conceptualize the social problem of burnout reveals much about the underlying values and assumptions of our culture. Our labels and conceptualizations also dictate how we study and attempt to solve the problem. And finally, new ways of thinking about burnout ultimately could lead to a fundamental rethinking of human service delivery systems in our society.
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Cherniss, C. (1986). Different Ways of Thinking about Burnout. In: Seidman, E., Rappaport, J. (eds) Redefining Social Problems. Perspectives in Social Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2236-6_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2236-6_13
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