What is the connection between burnout and physical illness? Roland von Känel, Director of the Clinic for Consiliary Psychology and Psychosomatics, has investigated this in a study. It was possible to prove that physical illnesses have a connection with burnout.

People who suffer from burnout are often exhausted, cynical or not fully productive. It has been known for some time that burnout increases the risk of developing physical disorders. However, the direct connection had not been researched much until now.

Roland von Känel and his colleagues, together with DU DA Data & Commtech by Farner, have investigated the connection between burnout and physical symptoms. For this purpose, 5671 people (age 18-70 years, ∅ 44.1 years, 38.6% men) participated in an online survey on the topic of burnout at work. For the survey, DU DA Data & Commtech developed a web-based health app that combines the four most important tests declared as gold standard and maps them in the new index value Burnout Risk Index (BRIX). Respondents answered questions on sociodemographic characteristics, symptoms of burnout and mood.

Physical disorders come before burnout

The subsequent network analysis, taking into account age, gender, education level, depressive symptoms, and all included disease categories, showed a significant association of severe fatigue with high blood pressure and other physical disorders. Decreased exercise capacity showed a significant association with chronic lung disease, and clinically relevant depressive symptoms had a significant association with high blood pressure, other chronic somatic diseases, and skin disease. These associations were confirmed by logistic regression analysis.

"According to current doctrine, burnout is not a disease, but it is very much a risk condition for sufferers to develop a mental or physical disease," says Roland von Känel. "With network analysis, we have now been able to demonstrate a significant link between burnout and various physical disorders - increased blood pressure, lung disease and other somatic diseases. The connection is particularly clear for exhaustion states in occupational burnout. And it's independent of the participants' age, gender, education level or depressive symptoms."

Identify burnout early

The study may highlight the importance of detecting burnout early. From everyday information about mood, sleep, stress levels, as well as physical indicators such as certain hormones or messenger substances in the blood, a scorecard can be created for the individual risk of burnout. This means that those affected can use the web-based health app from DU DA Data & Commtech to identify much earlier than today whether and where they are at risk of burnout and react to it at an early stage in order to prevent physical illness.