On October 7, 2021, Silver Oak Health, Bangalore organised a semi-interactive session called ‘Overcoming Fatigue and Burnout’. The session was facilitated by Aarathy Lakshmi who works in the client engagement team at Silver Oak Health. She has a Master’s Degree in counselling psychology from Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Aarathy’s expertise includes common mental health conditions such as stress, anxiety, and challenges related to interpersonal relationships.
The session covered topics such as ‘what burnout is’, ‘coping with burnout’, ‘understanding burnout for caregivers’, ‘warning signs of burnout’, and ‘stages of burnout’. Aarathy explained what actually burnout it and how it is a state of emotional, mental and often physical exhaustion due to prolonged stress. She explained this with an example of a vehicle coming to a standstill after being pushed to its limits. The speaker also explained that it is not only job or workplace, but also parenting, caregiving, caretaking and/or interpersonal relationships that can cause burnout.
As the session progressed, the speaker displayed a chart that talked about a survey on psychological impact of Covid-19 in India. Aligning with the chart, Aarathy discussed how the pandemic created a conflict between life and livelihood, caregiver burnout and parental burnout. Later, responses were collected from attendees related to signs of burnout. Aarathy explained the 5 stages of burnout followed by seven types of rests to cope with burnout which were, Physical, Mental, Sensory, Creative, Emotional, Social, and Spiritual.
This interactive session integrated along with activities came to an end with the speaker responding to the participants’ queries.