Burnout, not COVID-19 restrictions, most affected mental health in Singapore during the pandemic

SINGAPORE: In the middle of last year, Jovena Loon found herself dreading going to sleep at night, having difficulty breathing and feeling a lump in her throat and stomach “all the time”.

“I remember sometimes resting on my bed at night, thinking: ‘Why am I here to suffer?’” the 31-year-old told CNA.

Ms Loon, who works in innovation for a multinational corporation in the food and beverage industry, started feeling this way after a trying stretch in her career and personal life.

She had been double hatting at work for half a year before taking on a new portfolio. Then followed health crises involving two older family members, for whom she was the main caregiver.

Ms Loon’s negative feelings started surfacing at the end of that period, when the situation at work and at home stabilised and she had time to rest.

“It became apparent to me that my life was kind of not under my control. That I didn’t have any sense of freedom, prioritisation of myself. I was just fulfilling the needs of everyone – my family, my work – and I felt like I wasn’t anybody.”

She continued feeling this way for about three to four months, before deciding to talk to her manager about taking a break from work in September last year.

Looking back, Ms Loon recognises that what she was going through at the time was burnout. Her struggle mirrors the experiences of many in Singapore during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a survey of mental health across six Asian societies during the pandemic, commissioned by CNA, Singapore was the only place where burnout was the leading factor affecting mental health during the pandemic, chosen by 57 per cent of respondents.

This bucked the trend seen in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong, where most people pointed to public measures to keep the pandemic under control, such as restrictions on mask-wearing and travel.

The results also contrasted with those from Malaysia and Indonesia, where respondents said the financial burden from loss of income most affected mental health.

PANDEMIC BLUES

As Singapore cycled through waves of infection and lockdown in the pandemic, Ms Loon developed a sense of uncertainty and of “not having a bright future”.

The inability to travel left her feeling a lack of freedom. She was also working harder during what was a disruptive time for her industry.

She developed an unhealthy lifestyle working from home, often waking up just in time for work, continuing into overtime and ending the day too tired to do anything else.

“A few months into the process, it definitely made me feel I was more like a robot than a human,” she said.

Burnout is a syndrome that results from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

It classifies burnout as an occupational phenomenon – not a medical condition – characterised by exhaustion, growing mental distance from one’s job and negative or cynical feelings towards it, and lower efficacy at work.

“The hallmark of burnout is feelings of negativity, which can include dread, anxiety, irritability and resentment. The individual may be less productive and even withdrawn, both at work and in personal life,” said Dr Zheng Zhimin, consultant psychiatrist at Nobel Psychological Wellness Clinic.

Whereas stress tends to come on quickly and dissipate once the stressor is gone, symptoms of burnout typically persist for at least one to three months, mental health professionals told CNA.

“If stress is the sense of drowning in responsibility, then burnout is the sense of being all dried up,” said Mr Chirag Agarwal, co-founder of counselling service Talk Your Heart Out.

CNA has previously reported on how work-from-home requirements during the pandemic contributed to longer work hours and blurred work-life boundaries.

“The stress of reduced personal space and options for leisure inevitably reduces life to just work or school within the confines of our home environments,” said Dr Zheng, who observed that a lack of work-life balance and social isolation caused more of her patients to experience burnout during the pandemic.

COVID-19 restrictions hurt people’s ability to take “micro steps” to manage stress, such as meeting friends and working out at the gym, and made “macro steps” like travelling harder too, said psychologist Muhammad Haikal Jamil of ImPossible Psychological Services.

The pandemic’s economic impact also made workers more vulnerable to burnout, although this could develop along two very different trajectories.

On the one hand were high performers from industries that were in demand during the pandemic, who pushed themselves to make the most of this time by doing more.

“A lot of these high performers viewed these past two years as a chance to capitalise. It’s like ... ‘It’s booming now, I better work harder,’” said Ms Crystal Lim-Lange, co-founder of leadership consultancy Forest Wolf.

On the other hand were people for whom business was going badly, and for whom the pandemic was a stressful and demoralising time, she said.

These developments meant that generally, more people sought mental health support during the pandemic, those working in the industry told CNA.

WHY SINGAPORE?

But outside the pandemic, is there something about how people live, work and play in Singapore that makes workers here more susceptible to burnout?

“We are the nation that sleeps the least in the entire world,” said Ms Lim-Lange, adding that sleep is intricately linked to mental health and resilience.

Singapore regularly features in global rankings of the most sleep-deprived cities, and last year topped a list of “fatigued cities” compiled by a UK bedding manufacturer.

Workers in Singapore sleep less, have poorer focus and are more distracted in part because of high Internet and mobile phone usage, said Ms Lim-Lange.

They tend to be bad at maintaining digital boundaries and asserting work-life boundaries, she added. At the same time, they are prone to avoiding conflict.

“People don’t know how to have difficult conversations and that is behind a lot of the burnout,” said Ms Lim-Lange.

“Singaporeans are so notoriously conflict-avoidant that they would just rather quietly look around for another job and resign ... than have that painful discussion with a boss (to say): ‘Hey, actually I’m struggling, I need a little bit more support from you.’”

“We see a lot of people not voicing out that they’re struggling, and then that doesn’t give the manager an opportunity to change anything,” said Dr Greg Lim-Lange, psychologist and co-founder at Forest Wolf.

“So step number one is that the employee really has responsibility to voice out when they’re overwhelmed, when something isn’t working out, and hopefully that can lead to some discussion around what can be changed.”

Another factor is that Singapore usually houses satellite or regional headquarters, meaning that many employees work late at night to match the business hours of global headquarters in other time zones, said Ms Lim-Lange.

ZOOMERS AND MILLENNIALS

Burnout was the top cause of deteriorating mental health chosen by survey respondents in Singapore between the ages of 18 and 39, which spans zoomers and millennials.

Those in their 40s chose burnout and the financial burden from loss of income as equally responsible for worse mental health, while people in their 50s and above pointed to COVID-19 restrictions and constrained social interactions instead.