Most people do not attribute their burnout symptoms to work.

A prevailing belief among researchers is that burnout is a work-specific syndrome induced by intractable job stress. The validity of this belief, however, remains unclear. This cross-sectional study compared burnout with two general conditions, nonspecific psychological distress (NSPD) and exhaustion, in terms of (a) causal attributions to work and (b) associations with 11 job variables (e.