Burnout

Last reviewed Saturday, October 24, 2026

Burnout is exhaustion that comes from long-term stress at work that hasn’t been managed. WHO describes three parts: feeling drained of energy, growing distant or cynical about your job, and doing your job less well. WHO calls it an occupational phenomenon, not a medical condition, and uses the word for work only.

Also called: burn-out; job burnout; occupational burnout. People also use it loosely for exhaustion from caring for a relative, but WHO keeps it to work.

Our stress guide explains how stress becomes burnout, and we’ve written about burnout in banking and the helping professions.

Signs and symptoms

Exhaustion: tired all the time, and a weekend off doesn’t refill you.
Distance: dreading work, feeling cynical or numb about it.
Doing less well: poor concentration, mistakes, feeling nothing you do counts.
In the body: poor sleep, irritability, headaches and stomach trouble.

Causes

WHO lists the risks at work: heavy workloads or too few staff, long or rigid hours, little control over your work, job insecurity and low pay, harassment or bullying, and clashing home and work demands.

Coping and recovery

Rest helps, but burnout usually needs change at work too. In trials with doctors, changing how work was organised did better than programmes aimed only at the individual, though effects were modest. Raise workload with your manager if you can, protect sleep and time off, limit after-hours messages, and lean on people outside work.

In Nigeria

In a study at a trauma centre in Enugu, about 7 in 10 doctors and nurses showed signs of burnout. In a Lagos study, most bank workers were moderately or highly stressed. Family responsibilities add to the load: among Lagos small business owners, having more dependants went with more distress.

Burnout vs depression

They share exhaustion, poor concentration and loss of interest, and often occur together; a 2019 review found them strongly linked but distinct. Burnout is about work. Depression affects the whole of life: low mood or loss of interest most of the day, nearly every day, for two weeks or more.

When to get help

Talk to someone if exhaustion has lasted weeks, rest no longer helps, or you dread every working day. A doctor can check for physical causes. You can book a licensed therapist on Mytherapist.ng for stress and burnout. If low mood has turned to hopelessness or thoughts of ending your life, call 112 (or 767 in Lagos), or Safe Place Nigeria on 0800 800 2000. The full list is on our helplines page.

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