Carla Denyer takes time out after being advised by her doctor to recover from burnout caused by juggling health issues with her parliamentary role. Her call for open conversation about burnout receives both supportive wishes and online hostility from people who question why politicians cannot handle routine work. Some critics argue that nurses and teachers must continue despite stress, and that these groups may better understand burnout. Additional backlash comes from people who feel burnt out from caring for elderly parents or disabled children, often without the financial means or choice to stop. Burnout was identified in the 1970s as a combination of stress and high dedication in caring professions, involving exhaustion and sometimes moral injury and anxiety about failing life-and-death responsibilities.
"Carla Denyer is taking some time out. The Bristol Central MP and former Green party co-leader says she is suffering from burnout after trying to juggle health issues on top of the job and has been advised by her doctor to take a break. In an ideal world, most people would just wish her a swift recovery and get on with their lives, as quite a lot of MPs from normally rival parties duly did, on the grounds that you never really know what is going on under the surface of someone else's life."
"Denyer's call for an open conversation about burnout has inevitably also resulted in the usual spasm of online venom, snark and angry men on radio phone-ins asking why politicians can't handle a few emails without needing a lie-down when nurses and teachers just have to soldier on regardless. (Though given that mental health issues are the most common cause of days off in the NHS in England, while teachers apparently claim the highest levels of work-related stress, depression and anxiety in Britain, Denyer might be right to suggest in her statement that they're the ones most likely to understand.)"
"Rather harder to dismiss as performative rage, however, is the backlash from some arguing that they feel burnt out too often from caring for elderly parents or disabled children, as much as from work but either can't afford to stop or don't have the choice. It's no coincidence that so many of these roles involve heavy responsibility for other people."
"The term burnout was originally identified in the 1970s to describe a specific combination of stress plus high levels of dedication in caring professions or a kind of price paid for being conscientious under pressure. In its strictest sense and I have had enough dealings with Denyer to think she was using the word carefully burnout involves not just exhaustion but often moral injury or people becoming anxious that they can't exercise sometimes life-and-death responsibilities in the way they were trained to."
Read at www.theguardian.com
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