Construção social do burnout no Brasil: medicalização da fadiga no trabalho e seus efeitos.

Abstract

Fatigue and stress have increasingly become a hallmark of urban life and, above all, of our relation to work. In the 1970s, one particular type of work-related fatigue was named burnout ( complete combustion ). Originally an object of psychology, burnout is considered to be a reaction to chronic stress, having reached the status of a psychiatric disorder in some countries (Sweden being the most emblematic case). Brazilian legislation defines it as a work-related disorder since 1999. Scarcely recognized as such, however, burnout is subject to a kind of struggle involving researchers, health professionals, trade unions and companies. This study analyzes burnout s trajectory in Brazil, investigating the occurrence and possible effects of the medicalization/psychologization of work fatigue, by studying the technoscientific discourses of Brazilian medicine and psychology about burnout. By means of bibliographical research, we analyze this scientific production in terms of its general characteristics, main authors and works, context of development and recurrent themes. Contrary to the international conceptual expansion trend, we verify that Brazilian research perceives burnout in a traditional way, i.e., as a condition almost exclusive to health or education professionals, in a expression of sociocultural concerns related to the problem of emotional regulation central to the so-called helping professions. Despite the predominant use of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), there is a remarkable variability in the interpretation of its results, which generally indicates burnout in terms of risk . A trend in research with students is identified (study considered as pre-professional activity ). The interest in burnout is also understood in the broader cultural context of (re)valuing emotions, associated to the ideology of individualism. We discuss the idea that establishing burnout as a concept depends not only on its association with the notion of stress (category whose strength is much more symbolic than strictly scientific ), but also on the equivalence between the hospital or school and the organization (company), reflecting a certain idea about work (the work in a company) and the worker (the entrepreneur). So, we argue that there is an implicit opposition between an old model of work organization, associated to hierarchy and bureaucracy (represented by the hospitalar or educational institution) and a new model, characterized by multidisciplinary teams functioning as a network (represented by Family Health Strategy, for example). We also notice an ambivalence regarding work transformations, sometimes viewed as desirable and inevitable, because arising from progress, sometimes viewed as noxious, source of suffering and loss of autonomy. So, by gathering a series of cultural values about the Person and work, burnout is built as a critical notion, but also as a sort of antimodel of work and the worker.