Introduction: Is burnout the toll of toil, or masked depression? Future directions in burnout research

The story of the burnout concept is well-documented. Herbert Freudenberger first identified this phenomenon in the 1970s, observing that volunteers working in St. Mark’s free clinic in New York became disillusioned due to their demanding yet disappointing interactions with difficult clients, a phenomenon he termed burnout . Christina Maslach expanded on this narrative, asserting that burnout is not confined to volunteers or those working directly with people. She defined burnout as “a state of exhaustion in which one is cynical about the value of one’s occupation and doubtful of one’s capacity to perform” (Maslach et al., 1996 , p. 20). Notably, she developed the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI, Maslach et al., 1996 ), which up until today remains the gold standard for measuring burnout.