Mothers suffer from fatigue and burnout

Double work and family: More and more mothers with burnout

06/18/2014

For many women, it is often very difficult to achieve, to reconcile work and family and to live on an equal footing. The double and triple burden of parenting, household and job has apparently health consequences. More and more mothers in Germany suffer from fatigue to burnout.

Significantly more cures due to mental disorders
According to experts, more and more mothers in Germany are suffering from exhaustion and even burnout. Thus, the proportion of mothers who made a cure for mental disorders at the Maternal Recovery (MGW), had increased significantly. As the data of the MGW, which were presented on Tuesday in Berlin, shows, he was still at 49 percent in 2003, but ten years later already at 86 percent. The MGW looks after about half of such cures in Germany. In 2013, around 49,000 mothers and 71,000 children took part in maternal and maternal and maternal cures of the MGW, 2,000 more than in the previous decade.

Constant time pressure - professional requirement - lack of recognition
„The number of mothers with fatigue syndrome to burnout, with sleep disorders, anxiety, headaches or similar diseases has increased by 37 percentage points in the last ten years“, said Anne Schilling, CEO of MGW. The women in the cures of the MGW were the most frequent sources of time pressure and commitment to the family as the causes of mental health problems. In addition, occupational requirements and too little recognition are burdensome. During the press conference in Berlin Schilling explained: „Constant time pressure, the occupational requirement and a lack of recognition are the top 3 stress factors which the mothers name in the treatment measures themselves.“ However, compared to 2003, more women also complained about problems in the partnership.

Burdens are socially conditioned
„The burdens are socially conditioned and the disease is not an individual failure“, MGW Board Chairman Dagmar Ziegler. Rather, it was the current change in family structures that led to „health risk“ will. Thus, the work in the family is unevenly distributed. For example, mothers feel that they have the primary responsibility for cutting off their children's school. In addition, the curriculum vitae can hardly be planned today. Often, violence and poverty would be added. Women generally face a daily contradiction between expectations of equality and gender equality „lived traditional role expectation“, said Ziegler.

Single mothers have a hard time
Single mothers are especially hard hit. According to the latest DAK health report, they are particularly stressed. Obviously, the burden of sole parenting and financial worries cause many single parents to feel overwhelmed and unappreciated, or plagued by worries. According to a study by the Bertelsmann Foundation in March of this year, 39 percent of lone parents depend on Hartz IV. Although the group of lone parents showed the highest level of stress according to the DAK study, it is also noteworthy that the unemployed are more stressed than executives.

Mothers want to live up to high expectations
Anne Schilling explained that mothers wanted to live up to the high expectations and often sought professional help, „if they can not work properly anymore.“ On average, the women were 37 years old and had an average of five health problems. These included, above all, back pain, severe fatigue, irritability, sleep disorders and headaches. Seventy percent of mothers were gainfully employed, many of them part-time, and about one-third of women were the family's main breadwinner. However, the MGW did not share the extent to which a change in prescribing practice contributed to the increase in the proportion of mental disorders as the cause of the cures. Positive was the MGW on the rejection rate of the health insurance companies of applications for mother-child cures to report. In 2011, 35 percent of all applications were rejected, compared to only 14 percent in 2013. (Ad)