Breaking Point

Auteur

Irvin Sam Schonfeld majored in psychology and minored in mathematics at Brooklyn College. He taught math for six years in a troubled New York City public school. Schonfeld earned a doctorate in developmental psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center and a post-doctoral degree in epidemiology at Columbia University. He has taught at Columbia, City College, and the CUNY Graduate Center. At Columbia, he worked with luminaries such as David Shaffer and Bruce Dohrenwend. Dohrenwend's influence and Schonfeld's experience as a teacher led to his undertaking research on job stress in teachers. He has reviewed for almost 30 journals and has been a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. In addition to his research on teacher stress, Schonfeld has published on the relation in Piagetian theory to the theory of fluid and crystallized abilities, neurological soft signs, multilevel modeling, and qualitative research. In 2013 he began a collaboration with Renzo Bianchi on the nature of the relationship of occupational burnout to depression. With Chu-Hsiang Chang, Schonfeld published a book entitled Occupational Health Psychology: Work, Stress, and Health (Springer Publishing Company). Renzo Bianchi earned his doctoral degree in psychology from Bourgogne Franche-Comté University in 2014. In 2015, he started working as a researcher and lecturer at the University of Neuchâtel. In 2018, he became an "Ambizione" grantee of the Swiss National Science Foundation at the same institution. He additionally served as an occasional lecturer at the University of Geneva. Based on his postdoctoral achievements, Bianchi was conferred the title of Privatdozent in 2020. In 2022, he joined the faculty of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) as an associate professor of psychology. Renzo Bianchi's research interests include occupational health and psychological assessment. He is the co-creator with Schonfeld of the Occupational Depression Inventory and the Pandemic Anxiety Inventory. He is a leader of the "MAD-OHP" research group at NTNU. Bianchi has published over 100 scientific papers to date.

Texte du rabat

Burnout has become a popular indicator of the distress that individuals can experience at work. In Breaking Point: Job Stress, Occupational Depression, and the Myth of Burnout, the authors, in the context of more than a decade of research, show how the phenomenon hidden behind the label of burnout is, in fact, depressive in nature.

This book unravels the connections between work, depression, and burnout. The authors underline the dangers of mislabeling a depressive condition as burnout, including misdiagnosis, improper treatment, and unaddressed suicidality. Finally, they offer a path forward for individuals and society. By recognizing the depressive roots of burnout, human resources specialists and occupational health professionals can refer employees for appropriate treatment and understand how and why problematic working conditions must be changed.

• Review the history of depression and burnout and their connection to work
• Learn about research that supports occupational depression as a more valuable construct than burnout
• Understand and address the stigma that inhibits affected employees from seeking treatment
• Discover specific, research-grounded actions that occupational health specialists can take to prevent and address depression and burnout in the workplace