I read this book in my local libary and found it very interesting. It also applies to government which have become infected with consultants and "reform" fads. Another good book was "The Witch Doctors, making sense of management gurus. WE already survived TQM, and now are going throug"reinvention" which was supposed to be all done in 3 to 5 years. Now 7 1/2 years later it takes 2x the number of people to do half the work in twice the time. This is is causing burnout in a lot of people. I'll buy the book when it comes out in paperback.

In the Truth About Burnout Drs. Maslach and Leiter propose the first real cure for burnout and the key to releasing peak potential in the workforce.

Much of the past advice on the topic of burnout focuses on how to help people cope with burnout. These techniques are useful and come in handy, but unfortunately they do not position or fortify people to reach higher levels of performance. Simply treating the symptoms of burnout is like giving someone a medicine that provides temporary relief from external signs that they have a cold. After the medication wears off, they still have a virus raging through their body that's slowing them down. Likewise the "virus" that causes burnout is disengagement with work and no matter what temporary relief solution we provide to ease the pain, in the form of workshops on how to cope and "employee assistance programs" at the end of the day the "virus of disengagement" is still alive and well and impairing performance.

This book is for anyone manager or individual contributor who has decided to stop coping and "sugar-coating" and instead seek a real and practical solution to burnout. I highly recommend it.

Joe Santana,
Co-author Manage IT

I currently teach a graduate-level course on Burnout in the Helping Professions. This book serves as the "bible" on burnout and prevention strategies from both organizational and personal perspectives. Use it fopr academic purposes as well as personal reasons. You'll be glad you did!

I'm sorry to see that this book is out of print, because it's even more pertinent today than when it was first written. The author describes the problem of "burnout" common in people in the helping professions, and points out that its causes come from the work environment rather than the individual. This is in contrast to most other studies of burnout, which view it as strictly the individual's problem and thus something to be treated on the individual level. She identifies the institutional problems that can lead to burnout -- e.g., excessive workloads and lack of control -- and offers suggestions on how to improve the work environment. In the era of "managed care," underfunded schools, and lack of support (financial and emotional) for people in the helping professions, her advice is more important than ever. Her 1997 book is excellent, but it focuses more on corporations, while I think the helping professions still have the worst problems with burnout. The writing in this book is more heavily "academic," but it's a thorough and believable study, and still very much worth reading.