Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Fabricestrasse 8, 01099, Dresden, Germany.
Department of Psychology, University of Geneva, Boulevard du Pont d'Arve 40, 1211, Geneve 4, Switzerland.
Int Arch Occup Environ Health. 2020 Aug;93(6):779-788. doi: 10.1007/s00420-020-01528-3. Epub 2020 Mar 13.
Burnout is a stress-related, psychological syndrome due to high levels of job stressors. It has been found to be related to impairments of well-being, health, and job outcomes. Alterations of glucocorticoid secretion might be a mechanism explaining the linkage between burnout and reduced psychophysical functioning. Regarding hair cortisol as indicator this assumption, so far, has been only examined in cross-sectional studies. Therefore, we aimed to compare cross-sectional and prospective associations between different burnout symptoms and hair cortisol, additionally investigating potential nonlinear associations.
The prospective study sample comprises 194 employees (95% nurses) from German geriatric care. We assessed burnout symptoms at baseline (t1) and 6 months later (t2) and collected hair samples for cortisol analyses at t2.
We found significant cross-sectional and prospective nonlinear (i.e., exponential) but not linear relationships between an aggregated measure of the burnout subscales emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced efficacy and hair cortisol, even after adjusting for BMI and depressive mood. None of the single subscales of burnout was related to hair cortisol after adjusting for confounders.
Our findings further support the assumption that accumulated burnout symptoms and hypercorticolism are positively related.
burnout 是一种与压力相关的心理综合征，源于高水平的工作压力。它已被发现与幸福感、健康和工作结果受损有关。糖皮质激素分泌的改变可能是解释 burnout 与心理生理功能下降之间联系的一种机制。关于头发皮质醇作为这一假设的指标，到目前为止，它仅在横断面研究中进行了检查。因此，我们旨在比较不同 burnout 症状与头发皮质醇的横断面和前瞻性关联，此外还研究了潜在的非线性关联。
前瞻性研究样本包括来自德国老年护理的 194 名员工（95%为护士）。我们在基线（t1）和 6 个月后（t2）评估 burnout 症状，并在 t2 时收集头发样本进行皮质醇分析。
我们发现，即使在调整了 BMI 和抑郁情绪后，倦怠子量表（情绪耗竭、玩世不恭和效能降低）的综合指标与头发皮质醇之间存在显著的横断面和前瞻性非线性（即指数）关系，但没有线性关系。在调整混杂因素后，倦怠的单个子量表均与头发皮质醇无关。
我们的研究结果进一步支持了这样的假设，即累积的 burnout 症状与高皮质醇水平呈正相关。
