[Is burnout a syndrome or an occupational disease? Instructions for occupational physicians]

Since Herbert Freudenberger described Burnout Syndrome (BOS) in 1974, thousands of scientific papers have been published on this syndrome and this trend does not seem to diminish. After being internationally known as a syndrome characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment in helping professions, its construct has been criticized, questioned, and subjected to profound modifications. To date, however, in Italy and in many other Countries it is not possible to diagnose this syndrome, because World Health Organization, in its last ICD-10, did not indicate any clinical criteria to diagnose it. Unfortunately, not even in the recent DSM- 5 by American Psychiatric Association, contrary to what was expected, BOS found room as a specific psychiatric disorder. As a consequence, framing this syndrome from a medical-legal point of view is still widely debated from scholars.