Affiliations: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska
Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden | Department of Medical Sciences, Uppsala University,
Uppsala, Sweden
Note: [] Address for correspondence: Lennart Hallsten, Department of
Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Division of Psychology, SE-171 77
Stockholm, Sweden. Tel.: +46 8 52483879; E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: Objective: Contingent self-esteem has been assumed to be a risk for
burnout-related disorders, and a contingent self-worth notion of job burnout
was applied to study the prospective relationship between job burnout and
registered episodes of sickness absence of ⩾ 60 consecutive days. Methods: Job burnout was defined as being in the high quartiles on the Maslach
Burnout Inventory – General Survey (MBI-GS) scales of exhaustion and cynicism
and, in addition, as being above the median on a scale for performance-based
self-esteem. Another high exhaustion-cynicism group, a "job wornout" group,
was defined as being high on the same MBI-GS scales but having
performance-based self-esteem scores below the median. Data were analyzed by a
multivariate, logistic regression approach. Participants: 4,109 public
employees in Sweden. Results: The job burnout group showed an over-risk
of long-term sickness absence incidence, both compared with a low
exhaustion-cynicism reference group and with the job wornout group after
adjustment for several potential confounders. No association with incidence of
long-term sickness absence was found for the job wornout group. Conclusions: The differential vulnerability to long-term sickness absence
among high exhaustion-cynicism groups suggests that a self-worth perspective of
job burnout can be advantageous for prevention of the costly long-term sickness
absences.
