Burnout is in the ICD as an "occupational phenomenon"

The World Health Organization recently expanded the definition of burn-out in the ICD-11 (International Classification of Diseases, essentially a list or book of diseases). It classifies burnout as a "syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed". It goes on to define burnout using the 3 classical scales of burnout defined by Dr. Maslach: exhaustion, depersonalization, and lack of efficacy.

Two main takeaways:

• Burnout is defined as an "occupational phenomenon", not a medical condition. This likely means that burnout isn't categorized as an illness on its own. Instead, burnout is just a factor that could lead to a different health condition.

• The WHO's definition of burnout very specifically refers to burnout in an occupational context - it only applies to work. You may feel burnt out as a student or parent but that would not quality as burnout based on this definition.

So what does this ultimately mean? It's difficult to say if this will change the conversation about burnout at a medical level at this point, but hopefully this expanded definition means that people continue to take burnout seriously and work on ways to handle it.