ExplainerBurnout symptoms are well known, but what about ‘burn-on’? If working overtime has you on the brink of a breakdown, you may be suffering from it

Unlike burnout, which is acute and leads to people taking sick leave, burn-on refers to chronic depressive exhaustion caused by working long hours and stress

Even burn-on sufferers may not know they are affected despite feelings of despair. Mental health professionals explain what to look out for and how to avoid it

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Working overtime in stressful conditions can result in what mental health professionals have termed “burn-on”. But the sufferer may not realise it despite feeling depressed and fatigued. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 9:45am, 18 Jun 2023

It was time to knock off long ago, but you’re still at your desk in the office on Friday evening. On Saturday you’ve got emails to write, and on Sunday you’ll do advance work for Monday.

If you regularly take on a workload like this, you may be on fire at your job. You may also be suffering from “burn-on”.

The term was coined by psychiatrist Timo Schiele and psychotherapist Dr Bert te Wildt. The two co-authored a book whose German title translates as Burn-on: Always on the Brink of Burnout.

They delineate the closely related syndromes: burnout is acute depressive exhaustion, while burn-on is chronic.

Dr Bert te Wildt, psychotherapist and co-author of “Burn-on: Always on the Brink of Burnout”. Photo: Droemer Knaur

“We felt it would be constructive to describe [chronic depressive exhaustion] and couch it in a different term to categorise patients more accurately,” te Wildt says.

The 11th – and latest – revision of the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD) includes burnout as an occupational phenomenon and not, in contrast to depression, as a medical condition, although the symptoms of both can be similar.