Burnout at work is the only version of burnout with an official definition. That definition is narrow, and it rules out everything outside the job.
Knowing where the boundary sits changes what you can ask for. It also changes who you might ask.
The only official definition
The World Health Organization added burn-out to ICD-11 in 2019. It made two things clear at once.
Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed... Burn-out refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life.
So burn-out is about the job. Not the marriage, not the caring, not the year you have had.
ICD-11 also files it among the reasons people contact health services, rather than among the diseases. It describes a situation you are in. It is not a condition you have.
Source: WHO: burnout occupational phenomenon
The three dimensions
Maslach and Leiter set out the model most research still uses.
The three key dimensions of this response are an overwhelming exhaustion, feelings of cynicism and detachment from the job, and a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment.
Their short names are exhaustion, cynicism and inefficacy. Exhaustion is the one people notice first. The model treats all three together, which is why exhaustion on its own does not describe it.
Cynicism here means distance. You stop caring about work you used to care about, and the not caring feels like protection.
Source: Maslach & Leiter 2016
How common this is
The Health and Safety Executive counts this every year for Great Britain. In 2024/25 around 960k workers had work-related stress, depression or anxiety.
Those cases cost about 22m working days. That is 52% of all work-related ill health in the same year.
The average case took roughly 23 days off work. That is a mean, and it says nothing about how long any one person needs.
Mental Health UK polled more than 4,000 UK adults in November 2025. Of those asked, 91% reported high or extreme pressure or stress in the past year.
That is one poll, not official statistics. We would not build a claim on it alone.
Sources: HSE: work-related stress 2025, Mental Health UK: burnout report 2026
What causes it, and how old that answer is
HSE names workload first: tight deadlines, too much work and too much responsibility. Lack of managerial support comes next, then bullying, reorganisation and unclear roles.
That breakdown is not from last year. HSE draws it from survey responses averaged over 2009-12, so it is the older picture rather than the current one.
We would rather tell you the age of the number than let it look fresher than it is.
Source: HSE: work-related stress 2025
What a professional can and cannot do
A professional cannot reduce your workload. They cannot change your manager, rewrite your contract or fix a badly run organisation.
NICE has no guideline on burnout. Its nearest document is NG212 on mental wellbeing at work, and it addresses employers. The levers it names mostly belong to someone other than you.
What a professional can do is work on what the job is doing to you. That covers the exhaustion, the cynicism and the sense of having become useless at something you were good at.
They can also help you decide. Staying, changing the terms or leaving are all decisions, and burnout makes every one of them harder to think about.
Source: NICE NG212
What the research has not settled
Maslach and Leiter name the gap themselves.
the relative dearth of evaluative research on potential interventions to treat and/or prevent burnout
Describing burnout has gone a great deal further than treating it. Anyone promising you a proven burnout treatment is ahead of the literature.
Source: Maslach & Leiter 2016
Support that is not therapy
If a professional feels like too much right now, these are lighter places to start.
England 
Wales Information on mental health support and where to find it, including support at work.
Our UK crisis page lists people you can talk to at any hour.
Thanks for your interest. We're not taking on new clients at the moment.
Want to work out what the job is costing you?
We ask what matters to you, then find professionals who fit.
- I have nothing left for work and nothing left after it
- I have stopped caring about a job I used to care about
- I feel useless at something I used to be good at
- I dread Monday from Saturday onwards
References
- World Health Organization (2019). Burn-out an "occupational phenomenon": International Classification of Diseases. Link
- Maslach, C. & Leiter, M. P. (2016). Understanding the burnout experience: recent research and its implications for psychiatry. World Psychiatry. doi:10.1002/wps.20311
- Health and Safety Executive (2025). Work-related stress, depression or anxiety statistics in Great Britain, 2025. Link
- Mental Health UK (2026). The Burnout Report 2026. Link
- National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (2022). Mental wellbeing at work (NG212). Link
