Publisher's Synopsis
BURNOUT: Since the beginning of civilization human beings have been trying their best to achieve the goal of happiness, peace and stress free life. These are the three parameters of prosperity in the present time. To achieve this goal, they have been striving to develop specialized knowledge and expertise in technology. This race has given birth to unending competitions and challenges in our life. One has to compete with oneself and with others in the organization. Even while competing with oneself, one can't totally disregard the primary social institutions, such as the home and family, which have been nurtured over the years by human civilizations and valued deeply by the individual. We may subscribe to this view to a lesser or greater degree or we may totally disregard the prevailing dilemma, but we would be forced to agree on one basic point- 'modern life is pervaded with stresses'. Stress in the present world is an inseparable part of one's life, irrespective of his or her social position and its status. It is inevitably experienced by each one of us in different magnitude in our daily life. People experience stress as they don't have complete control over what happens in their life. It is agreed that stress is necessary because without experiencing some degree of stress we would be lifeless and apathetic creatures. Stress is unavoidable and inseparable part because it is connected with the changes in one's life and increasing complexities at workplace in today's environment across the groups. In this most competitive era and fast pace of development its impact has increased manifolds and its adverse effects in varying degree can be observed in almost every one of us. Basically, stress refers to a sensation that everyone feels and which occurs in response to events and situations that every one faces in day to day life. In the present era, there are tremendous changes in social- cultural values rising due to the growth of industries, pressure in urban areas, quantitative growth in population and innumerable other factors that are now an integral part of modern life. People's life pattern has become relatively more complicated, demanding, challenging and dependent. It is now perhaps in every society that people have started moving gradually from traditionally individualistic work towards corporate life that had brought drastic changes in their outlook and physical and socio-cultural environment at large. People have to face inevitably various stressors related to both on job and off the job activities and these stressors seem to continually increase the needs and aspirations. In the present time high competition, time deadlines, an argument with colleagues as seniors, work- load and work pressures, uncertainty of future, poorly designed jobs, marital disharmony, lack of support from relatives and/ or colleagues at work etc are some of the stressful situations which everybody faces in his/her life. These work and non- work stressors, which almost every employee has to experience, are important because they not only tend to change the life of the person rather a major source of his or her mental and physical illness. The general complaints and commonly observed physical ailments arising due to stressors are headaches, insomnia, cardiovascular diseases, skin diseases, and allergies, gastrointestinal and other respiratory diseases. The work related symptoms, which are psychological in nature such as tension, anxiety, imitation, job dissatisfaction and boredom, are also the result of work overload and stress,
