Burnout: Who to Consult, and in What Order

When things get difficult, the question that comes up is always the same: who do I talk to. The usual answer is a list, and a list helps nobody: these people have neither the same role, nor the same power, nor the same obligations towards what you tell them.

Here is what each can actually do — and in what order to approach them. This article is about exhaustion: the starting point is medical, and the sequence follows from that. If your question is about reporting a degraded work situation — alert rights, investigations, a harassment officer — the logic is different and a separate article covers it.

1. The family doctor — the starting point, without exception

This is the only person who can certify sick leave, refer you to a specialist, and treat what is physical. Entrenched fatigue, sleep problems, weight loss, pain, digestive trouble, rising blood pressure: all of that needs examining, because several very different causes produce similar pictures. No amount of reading, no questionnaire, no online test replaces that examination.

What to bring to that appointment — because it is what is most often missing: dated facts, not a general impression. Times to bed and up over three weeks, what has become impossible and since when, what changed at work and on what date. A doctor decides far better with a series than with "I've been tired for a while."

First. Always.

2. The occupational health doctor — the least understood contact

Three false beliefs circulate about this role, and they deprive many people of a real lever.

"They work for the company." They are funded by it, and they are bound by medical confidentiality, exactly like your family doctor. What you tell them does not go back. What goes back are fitness conclusions and proposed adjustments — never the content of a consultation, never a diagnosis. "You have to go through your employer to see them." No. An employee can request an appointment with the occupational health service directly, without the employer being informed. Contact details are usually on the payslip; failing that, employee representatives have them. "They can't do anything." They cannot certify sick leave, that is true. But they act on what nobody else can change: the job. Adjusted hours, restrictions on certain tasks, written proposals to the employer, alerts about a department's working conditions. And they run the pre-return consultation, during leave, which is the best tool available for preparing a return. Approach early — including before any leave, and during leave.

3. The psychologist or psychotherapist — what the situation has produced

A distinct role from the first two: they do not prescribe, they do not change the job. They work on what the situation has installed — the relationship with sleep, rumination, loss of confidence in one's own abilities, anticipatory anxiety, and often the older mechanisms that led to holding on too long.

Two clarifications. First, this work does not replace a change in conditions: a therapy that made someone able to tolerate an unchanged environment would not be a success. Second, timing matters — in the very first weeks of leave, many people have neither the energy nor the mental availability required. Starting a little later is not losing time.

4. Employee representatives — the collective level

This is the most underused contact, and the only one that acts at a level other than your own.

What they can do: raise a working-conditions issue without your name being at the front, get a subject put on an agenda, formally query the employer about a department, accompany you to a meeting, give you the occupational health service's details, and know what your collective agreement provides — something almost nobody checks.

What they cannot do: decide anything about your health, or replace a doctor.

One practical point: they hold information about the organisation that you do not have. How many people have left that post in three years, how many periods of leave in that department, what has already been reported. That information often changes how a person reads their own situation.

5. The labour inspectorate — checking the employer

Its object is the employer's compliance with obligations, notably on health and safety. It does not deal with your state of health, it does not settle an individual dispute, and it does not replace a judge.

It is useful when objective, documented facts concern the organisation itself. It is much less useful when approached early, without material, in the expectation of an arbitration it has no remit to give.

6. The lawyer — when a legal decision is on the table

A lawyer's role begins at a precise moment: when a decision with legal consequences is being considered — termination, a challenge, recognition of an occupational origin, proceedings. Consulting before signing or writing anything irreversible avoids most of the damage. Free or low-cost consultations are widely available, and some insurance or mutual-society legal cover includes this kind of advice: check before giving up for financial reasons.

The order — and why reversing it costs months

Medical first, organisational second, legal last.

This is not a preference, it is a matter of effectiveness. The reverse order — starting with a lawyer or an inspectorate while sleeping three hours a night — produces three known effects: it consumes the energy that is missing, it moves the subject onto ground where delays are measured in months, and it postpones the one examination that could have changed something in the short term.

There is one clear exception: if dark thoughts appear, nothing is prioritised. A doctor or emergency services are accessible immediately, and crisis lines exist for exactly this.

What to prepare before the first appointment

The same document serves all of them: a chronology of dated facts. What changed at work and when, what was asked and by whom, what was refused, what was said in meetings, when scope moved. Without interpretation.

That is what ScanMyJob does: it puts professional facts into a dated series without concluding — a doctor, an employee representative and a lawyer will all three ask for the same thing, in different words. The published examples show the expected level of detail.

Three things this article does not do

It does not say what applies to you. Describing what is happening is a doctor's work, not an article's and not a questionnaire's. It does not describe any legal procedure. Conditions, deadlines and remedies are legal matters, they differ by country, and they evolve. Check with official sources, employee representatives or a lawyer. It does not rank these contacts by importance. The order proposed is a sequence. The occupational health doctor remains useful after a lawyer, and an employee representative remains useful after a period of leave.