In Search Of Theory: Some Ruminations on the Nature And Etiology of Burnout

Reading the theoretical literature on the burnout syndrome for the past decade, one sometimes gets the impression that what is being looked for is a specific cause of a specific mental disorder. If it has a name, we will find what lies behind it—something akin to a metabolic deficiency or a virus. Could it be role conflict, lack of feedback, an external locus of control, or too much red tape? Correlations between these and burnout measures keep being significant, given adequate sample sizes, but not very impressive numerically. And so the search goes on.