Burnout

In the burnout stage your performance is well below your normal level and it takes much longer to recover. Burnout has also been referred to as a nervous breakdown or mental collapse. These four stages as mentioned before can take a long time or be suddenly or even delayed. An acute stressor can cause the immediate dramatic and often overwhelming response to a particular incident and all four stages can be gone through in a matter of seconds or they can be delayed. Delayed reaction happens weeks or even months after the incident. Cumulative stress can be just as damaging as acute or delayed but is not in response to any one particular incident but rather to the accumulation of a number of incidents over a long period of time. In the handout "Stress and You" you can see the various sources of stress and it also gives you some solutions on how to minimize or reduce the effects of stress, details of sources of stress on the job, at home and the influence of your lifestyle on your level of stress. Stress can affect your whole family not just you, so we encourage you to take this handout home and go over it with your family members.

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