[collyw]

Burnout and exhaustion are a mental health issues?

I though they were more of a problem with prioritizing things in your life.

Edit: I have suffered from both of these things myself, and I never considered myself to have mental health problems. In my case it was (still is) a case of taking a step back and re-prioritizing things. Apparently I shouldn't tell myself that?

[fredley]

These are exactly the kind of assumptions that I think this programme is taking aim at. Not to critisise you for thinking them - I think this is how most people, and society in general, view these issues.

Telling someone whose burnt out that they just need to reprioritise their life is like telling a depressed person to just cheer up. It's more complicated than that, and there are often deeper things that need to be untangled before someone can get better.

[vertex-four]

Note that "mental health" doesn't just refer to chemical inbalances or miswiring or whatever else - in a more general sense, it refers to literally what it says, the health of your mind. If you're suffering from burnout or exhaustion, that is not a healthy state to be in.

(I'll note that the DSM-V apparently does not contain burnout because it's problematically close to depressive disorders, and exhaustion is a symptom of a lot of things.)

If you can help yourself, that's awesome, but for a lot of people, a professional who has experience helping people in dealing with these problems might be able to help them too.

[Dewie]

It's unclear whether you're asking a genuine question, or just using a rhetorical one to dismiss the idea altogether. I guess the lack of question mark on the second line points to it being the latter.

Consider that if you're already burned out - even if they "just" had to do with bad life prioritize - it's often not like you can just quit whatever you're doing and go on a retreat. You still have that 9-5 job, or whatever more heavy-weight responsibilities. Then it doesn't really matter what the original cause was - it's a mental health issue.

[collyw]

I would say it is a work life balance issue.

I am not saying its not a problem, but I am struggling to see it as a mental health issue.

The first hit I got on Google doesn't talk about exhaustion or burnout. It does mention depression, which I agree with.

http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/help-information/an-introduct...

[DanBC]

The first sentence: "Mental health problems range from the worries we all experience as part of everyday life to serious long-term conditions."

EDIT: http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/help-information/mental-healt...

> All sorts of situations can cause stress. The most common involve work, money matters and relationships with partners, children or other family members. Stress may be caused either by major upheavals and life events such as divorce, unemployment, moving house and bereavement, or by a series of minor irritations such as feeling undervalued at work or dealing with difficult children. Sometimes there are no obvious causes.

> Stressful events that are outside the range of normal human experience, for example being abused or tortured, may lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

> Some stress can be positive. Research shows that a moderate level of stress makes us perform better. It also makes us more alert and can help us perform better in situations such as job interviews or public speaking. Stressful situations can also be exhilarating and some people actually thrive on the excitement that comes with dangerous sports or other high-risk activities.

> But stress is only healthy if it is short-lived. Excessive or prolonged stress can lead to illness and physical and emotional exhaustion. Taken to extremes, stress can be a killer.

[tomjen3]

Isn't that the main issue? We can easily dismiss depression because everybody feels sad sometimes, we can easily dismiss burn-out as you just don't feel motivated, etc.

[DanBC]

Yes, sadness is a normal part of life and we don't want to treat sadness as a medical condition. Sometimes that sadness interferes with day to day life, and it doesn't seem to be going away. Most people who experience grief will work through it; the grief changes. So when these problems start interfering with day to day living is when people need help.

And for most people that's going to be small interventions - having a coffee with a friend who is talking to you for example. The interventions taper up as the severity of the illness increases. Talking therapies; medication; hospital in-patient stays; rarely, if someone is at risk of death or of harming other people they can be hospitalised against their will; even more rarely there's ECT.

We know that early intervention is important. And modern mental health services should be talking about "resilience" which increases someones ability to cope with daily life.

[collyw]

Lots of strawmen. I talked about burnout and exhaustion, not stress.

[DasIch]

Put physical stress on your body for too long and it will take damage. Why should the same principle not apply to your mind?

[collyw]

Well for starters your mind isn't physical.

And if you think about it, stressing your body makes it stronger. That's why working out builds muscles.

[DasIch]

That's only true for certain movements, performed for a certain period of time and potentially with only a cetain amount of force applied to your body. A movement performed incorrectly, performed for too long or with too much force will damage your body.

And of course, this only applies, if the stress doesn't take the form of your head being hit by a hammer.

Besides whether your mind is physical or not doesn't really matter all that much. What matters is that it's mutable. It can be changed, for better or worse and that change depends on the environment.

[pluma]

It can be a work life balance issue.

The work life balance issue itself can also just be a symptom of something else entirely.

It's a bit like calling addiction a willpower issue. Yes, the lack of willpower is the direct cause, but the underlying causes can be entirely unrelated (which is why recidivism is a common occurrence if you just dump the "healed" addict back in the same environment he came from).

Burnout is mostly used as a more socially acceptable synonym for some cases of depression, so it's difficult to talk about. Mental health issues are complicated enough as it is. Especially because even those suffering from them often fail to address them for what they are.

[Dewie]

> I would say it is a work life balance issue.

Did you even read my second paragraph? Even though it might be caused by a bad work/life balance, that doesn't mean that it isn't a mental issue when you eventually become burnt out.

It's like a depressed person who starts exercising and gets some relief from that - "Oh, then it seems that your problem was your physical fitness, not anything to do with depression". It seems a bit myopic.

[collyw]

Again, burnout and exhaustion have morphed into "stress" in your counter argument. I sure you could relate pretty much anything negative to some kind of "stress", which means anything negative is now a mental health issue according to your logic.