Underpining the Relaionships between Burnout, Depression and Somatic Stress - A Mixed Method Approach

Abstract

A number of measures have been designed by researchers to assess different dimensions of occupational stress. Many existing studies are particularly focused on the various manifestations of stress e.g. depression, anxiety, burnout, somatic illness etc. still there exists a debate regarding the similarities and differences among these stress dimensions. This study focused on measuring somatic stress, depression & burnout and tried to identify the relationship between these dimensions of stress using few stress instruments adapted to the sample of 274 teachers from few universities from KP province of Pakistan by using convenience based sampling. In addition, this study also aimed to get a better understanding of these dimensions of stress through semi-structured interviews. Study aimed to clarify the different facets of stress from the available literature and also addressed the stress measurement problems using mixed methods, particularly for the new entrants in this field. Results revealed significant positive relationships between emotional exhaustion & depersonalization. Emotional exhaustion also showed significant impact on depression and somatic stress. The results deduced from the semi-structured interviews supported the results deduced from the quantitative methodology. However, detailed interviews for the analysis purpose (in NVIVO or ATLAS) couldn’t be conducted which is one of the shortcomings of this study. Future researchers should give equal weight to both the methods i.e. quantitative as well as qualitative.