2024-03-20 09:21:24
He director of the Chair of Expert Evaluative Medicine at the Catholic University of San Antonio de Murcia (UCAM), José Manuel Vicente Pardotogether with Professor Araceli López, coined this new concept, sisifemia, in 2022 after detecting a new profile of work disorder with characteristics different from others such as burnout syndrome or chronic stress.
And they observed it in the diagnoses of the sick leave reports of workers with symptoms of anxiety and adaptive and depressive disorders that were distinguished from other work-related illnesses.
José Manuel Vicente Pardo, specialist in Occupational Medicine and also head of the Medical Unit of the Disability Assessment Team of the National Institute of Social Security (INSS) in Guipúzcoa, in an interview with EFEsalud, defines sisifemia as “the fatigue of the tireless worker.”
The term is inspired by the Greek myth of Sisyphus, condemned by the gods to carry a heavy rock to the top of the mountain and let it fall to start over.
The rock is the load that the company puts on a worker who works in a loop and who wears out from going up and down the mountain so much.
On the right, the work “Sisyphus”, by Antonio Zanchi, in an exhibition at the Prado Museum. EFE/Javier Lizón
The profile of the employee with sisifemia
And these signs that should warn us of sisifemia respond to a compliant person, committed to the company’s objectives, “who is not satisfied with doing things well, but with making them perfect” and so involved in the work that he loses his vision, like Sisyphus who was blind, that life is much more than work.
An individual who ends up abandoning most of his family time, leisure time, exercise time… and focuses on professional activity, which he also takes home even if he spends marathon days at the workplace or teleworking without closing time.
Sisifemia is not typical of any profession, it responds more to higher careers and the professional profiles are lawyers, employees of consultancies, financial companies, doctors, journalists, researchers and senior officials of the Administration, “but not politicians, I believe that they are not they suffer from sisifemia,” says the expert.
In this sense, he believes that the public administration managers themselves are not aware of the work disorders generated, for example, by a lack of personnel, as occurs in public health, which suffers “a very high structural deficit.”
José Manuel Vicente, director of the Chair of Expert Evaluative Medicine at the Catholic University of San Antonio de Murcia (UCAM). Photo provided
The phenomenon of the great renunciation
A characteristic of sisifemia is that it appears shortly after starting a professional career, “at stages in which one cannot say no to work,” and he cites the example of scholarship holders in the field of scientific research or doctors, MIR, who are completing their years of residency in hospitals.
“These are jobs that have to be done, as they say, for yesterday”, a situation that causes high levels of stress and that connects with a situation that is currently occurring more in other countries than in Spain: the phenomenon of the great renunciation.
The doctor explains that it is about abandoning everything you have achieved after years of training and a professional activity that allows you to have your financial needs covered.
Sisifemia is exhaustion in a relatively short period of time due to a high level of self-demand, unlike burnout syndrome, which occurs after accumulating years of activity.
The warning signs of sisefemia
In order not to reach these extremes, it is necessary to detect the warning signs that sisefemia causes. Absolute dedication to work with almost unattainable goals generates consequences for mental and physical health.
José Manuel Vicente explains that this work disorder causes “extreme mental and physical fatigue” in a person obsessed with work.
“He is feeling – he specifies – more and more anxiety, an anxiety to be able to do the job with extreme concentration and that remains latent beyond the work day.”
A looping anxiety that leads to sleep disturbances, such as insomnia or waking up several times thinking about work, and impacts your night’s rest.
“The next morning we are tired and if we are tired, we try to perform more and we still try to maintain greater attention, greater concentration or even prolong the day because we cannot cope,” he indicates.
Then it occurs “neuroendocrine exhaustion” which affects the hormones cortisol and serotonin, a sustained stress that can cause cardiac and cerebrovascular events, diabetes, dermatological processes, asthma, back pain generated by tension and even obesity derived from ingestion due to anxiety.
The consumption of anxiolytics, in addition to alcohol or other drugs, attempts to alleviate the symptoms, the first consequences of sisifemia, without providing the correct remedy, which is a change in behavior regarding work.
And for this reason, the doctor recommends, when faced with these symptoms, resorting to exercise“the best anxiety burner”, to the meditation to center the focus of what you do and restespecially at night.
The stress produced by work has negative effects on our physical and mental health.
sick leave
When these mental and physical signs appear in a diagnosis, the ICD 10 or International Classification of Diseases is followed, where sisifemia or burnout do not appear as such, but rather the effects they produce such as anxiety, stress, depression or other disorders for which specialists Doctors consider giving the worker sick leave and even permanent disability.
“We have had cases of sick leave and even permanent disability, for not knowing how to cut off in time, for not knowing how to detect the alarm symptoms,” points out the occupational medicine specialist.
According to the doctor, “there are many patients who have thanked us for giving a name to a situation they suffered from. And that is related to poor performance by the company.”
The conspiracy of silence
The profile of the person affected by sisifemia (perfectionist and obsessive about complying to the extreme) is ideal for companies “that tend to abuse this type of people instead of monitoring psychosocial risks,” says the director of the Chair of Expert Evaluative Medicine of the UCAM.
And companies take refuge in another situation that José Manuel Vicente calls “the conspiracy of silence”: “It is difficult for a very perfectionist person to tell their superiors or co-workers that even though they want to do well, they begin to realize that they cannot perform” because mental and physical exhaustion, sisyphemia, is taking over. he or she.
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