Stress Coping

"Burnout is generally considered a response by a person to chronic work-related stress in an attempt to adapt or protect oneself from it. From a transactional approach, stress is defined as \"the result of a relationship with the environment that the person appraises as significant for his or her well-being and in which the demands tax or exceed available coping resources.\" This is the case because a life event is not what produces stress; rather, it is caused by the appraisal the affected person makes of it. According to Lazarus and Folkman, coping is \"cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific internal and/or external demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the person.\" A person will be psychologically vulnerable to a determined situation if he or she does not possess sufficient coping resources to handle it adequately, and if at the same time, he or she places considerable importance on the threat implicit in the consequences of this inadequate handling. From this perspective, burnout syndrome may be seen as a progressively-developed process resulting from the use of the relatively ineffective coping strategies with which professionals try to protect themselves from work-related stress."