Burnout in healthcare is often dismissed as an expected aspect of the job or a rite of passage for clinicians. This perspective is both clinically inaccurate and potentially harmful.
As a psychiatric mental health clinician and health tech founder dedicated to supporting psychiatrists, psychiatric nurse practitioners, psychologists, and counselors, I see burnout as a mental health condition with real consequences. Burnout is not a lack of resilience. It is a syndrome that deserves recognition, treatment, and prevention.
Burnout Syndrome Is Formally Recognized in ICD-10 and ICD-11
Burnout is not job dissatisfaction. It is formally recognized in international diagnostic systems.
In ICD-10, burnout syndrome is coded Z73.0 and categorized under problems related to life management difficulties. In the pending ICD-11, burnout is defined as an occupational phenomenon resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed (1). ICD-11 describes burnout as characterized by emotional exhaustion, increased mental distance from work, and reduced professional efficacy.
These features overlap directly with symptoms that impair sleep, cognition, emotional regulation, interpersonal functioning, and occupational performance. Burnout often functions as the clinical context in which anxiety disorders, depressive disorders, insomnia, and trauma-related symptoms develop.
Where Burnout Fits in the DSM Framework
Burnout is not explicitly named as a standalone condition in DSM-5 or DSM-5-TR. That omission does not reflect a lack of clinical relevance. The DSM includes an entire section titled “Other Conditions That May Be a Focus of Clinical Attention,” which relies on ICD Z-codes to capture psychosocial and occupational factors that significantly affect mental health care.
DSM-5-TR explicitly lists occupational Z-codes, such as:
- Z56.3 Stressful work schedule
- Z56.4 Discord with boss and workmates
- Z56.5 Uncongenial work environment
- Z56.6 Other physical and mental strain related to work
- Z56.81 Sexual harassment on the job
The DSM already acknowledges that work conditions can be clinically central even when they are not standalone mental disorders. In my professional opinion, burnout syndrome (Z73.0) should be included in future DSM revisions alongside these occupational Z-codes, rather than being implied indirectly.
Historically, burnout-related stressors were captured under Axis IV of the DSM multiaxial system and directly informed the global assessment of functioning. While the multiaxial system no longer exists, the clinical role of burnout remains unchanged. It remains essential to understand severity, prognosis, and treatment planning.
Burnout Is Often Secondary but Clinically Central
Burnout syndrome (ICD-10 Z73.0) is frequently coded alongside conditions such as adjustment disorders, insomnia, anxiety disorders, or depressive disorders. That does not make burnout incidental. In many cases, it is the driving force behind symptom persistence and functional decline.
Treating anxiety, depression, or insomnia without addressing burnout leads to incomplete care. Naming burnout allows clinicians to target both the syndrome and the downstream mental health conditions it fuels.
Burnout Is Not Just Stress
Any healthcare provider can experience periods of burnout. What matters clinically is escalation and continued prolonged exposure leading to clinically significant sequelae.
Burnout becomes a mental health condition when symptoms progress to impaired sleep, cognitive fatigue, emotional exhaustion, irritability, avoidance, depersonalization, and reduced ability to function at work or at home. At that point, clinicians seek psychiatric care and therapy. Burnout is no longer a background stressor. It is a primary driver of impairment.
Physicians have the highest suicide rates of any profession in the United States. Healthcare workers have the highest occupational burnout rates across industries. These facts alone demand that we take burnout seriously as a mental health issue, not dismiss it as an expected side effect of the job.
A Founder’s Commitment to Burnout Treatment and Prevention
As a health tech founder, I care about burnout not only because I treat it in my clinical practice, but because I want to prevent it where possible. Prevention includes reducing cognitive load, administrative burden, and unnecessary friction in clinical work. Even small interventions matter when clinicians are already operating at their limits.
Burnout syndrome deserves clear recognition in our diagnostic systems, meaningful treatment pathways, and proactive prevention strategies. If we want to protect the mental health workforce, we must stop normalizing burnout and start treating and preventing it with the seriousness it warrants.
