Many have been crushed. The Berkeley psychologist Christina Maslach has spent years studying the phenomenon of occupational burnout. She focussed on health care early on, drawn by the demanding nature of working with the sick. She defined burnout as a combination of three distinct feelings: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization (a cynical, instrumental attitude toward others), and a sense of personal ineffectiveness. The opposite, a feeling of deep engagement in one’s work, came from a sense of energy, personal involvement, and efficacy. She and her colleagues developed a twenty-two-question survey known as the Maslach Burnout Inventory, which, for nearly four decades, has been used to track the well-being of workers across a vast range of occupations, from prison guards to teachers.
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