Work Addiction, Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder, Burn-Out, and Global Burden of Disease: Implications from the ICD-11

Paweł A. Atroszko, Zsolt Demetrovics and Mark D. Griffiths
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Paweł A. Atroszko: Department of Psychometrics and Statistics, Institute of Psychology, University of Gdańsk, Bażyńskiego 4, 80-952 Gdańsk, Poland
Zsolt Demetrovics: Department of Clinical Psychology and Addiction, Institute of Psychology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Izabella utca 46., H-1064 Budapest, Hungary
Mark D. Griffiths: Psychology Department, Nottingham Trent University, 50 Shakespeare Street, Nottingham NG1 4FQ, UK

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 2, 1-13

Abstract: Occupational stress and high workload are being increasingly recognized as significant contributors to the diseases and disorders constituting major components of the global burden of disease. A more detailed definition of burn-out was recently included by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the eleventh revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) which reflects a growing acknowledgment of the role of professional work in mental health. One of the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder/anankastic personality disorder (OCPD/APD) is an undue preoccupation with productivity to the exclusion of pleasure and interpersonal relationships. This compulsive overworking is closely related to the concept of work addiction, and OCPD/APD was suggested to be its major risk factor. OCPD/APD is the most prevalent personality disorder and one that appears to produce the highest direct and indirect medical costs. At the same time, it is vastly understudied. In recent years, it has been repeatedly emphasized that it requires consistent conceptualization and clarification of its overlapping with similar conditions. Even though the limited existing studies suggest its strong relationship with burn-out and depression among employed individuals, there has been no systematic effort to investigate its role in the consequences of occupational stress and high workload. This paper identifies several substantial gaps in the current understanding of the relationships between work addiction, OCPD/APD, burn-out, and the global burden of disease within the context of the WHO’s plan of developing evidence-based guidelines on mental wellbeing in the workplace.

Keywords: burn-out; global burden of disease; mental health; obsessive-compulsive personality disorder; perfectionism; World Health Organization; work addiction; workaholism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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