Is your career killing you by stealth? If you feel excessively tired, devoid of energy, demoralised and irritable, you have the classic symptoms of a condition with disastrous potential: occupational burnout.
More than half of sick days taken in Britain are caused by work-related stress, anxiety and depression, according to the UK Health and Safety Executive. Burnout doesn’t only make work feel demoralisingly futile; studies show that it may precipitate a fatal heart attack or stroke, or prompt chronic illnesses such as type 2 diabetes or dementia.
A 25-year survey of 11,000 people published this month in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology warns that those with the most symptoms of burnout have a 20 per cent higher than normal risk of atrial fibrillation.