Mental Health Deterioration
Mental health is important for a variety of reasons including: being able to work productively, conducting healthy behaviors, and being able to manage stress. However, mental health deterioration, often caused by a variety of reasons, can lead to a decrease in work productivity, difficulty maintaining friendships, and an overall negative attitude. Burnout can lead to mental health deterioration as well.
According to the Mayo Clinic, burnout is defined as “a state of physical or emotional exhaustion that also involves a sense of reduced accomplishment and loss of personal identity.” Burnout can be as a result of many factors, including overworking, excessive stress, and other factors such as “lack of control and unclear job expectations.”
However, there has been another factor that is leading to burnout in recent years.
Zoom Fatigue
According to stanford.edu, “consequences of prolonged video chats that he says contribute to the feeling commonly known as “Zoom fatigue.” Zoom fatigue is as a result of many causes, including: “excessive amounts of close-up eye contact, seeing yourself during video chats constantly in real-time, video chats dramatically reduc[ing] our usual mobility, and the cognitive load [being] much higher in video chats.” All of these factors contribute to what is known as zoom fatigue, or the fatigue that people face after countless hours on zoom.
Question yourself: Are you facing zoom fatigue right now?
Zoom fatigue, like all other fatigues, must be handled correctly in order to maintain a state of well-being.
As the COVID-19 Pandemic progresses, Zoom Fatigue is becoming more and more prevalent in people’s lives. As there are more and more uses of zoom for video conferencing, this is becoming a way of life for many, but similarly to when people face fatigue in their bodies, zoom fatigue should be handled in the same way. People need to take breaks outside of the screen, stretch, and get restful nights of sleep.
In addition, Zoom Fatigue can have an effect on mental health as well. Zoom fatigue can lead to burnout, which “may increase the risk of someone getting depression” (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov). Therefore, it is crucial that one is able to maintain zoom fatigue in a way that is effective and beneficial to one’s mental and physical health.
Zoom fatigue can lead to burnout, which can increase the risk of someone getting depression.