There are two major ways medical aspects may be important for you. (A) You may feel you are burning out, but the cause is rather some organic, „medical“, condition. (B) You may consult your doctor for physical complaints, but the root cause is burnout.
A:
Before you seek a consultant or psychotherapist, you should make sure you are not suffering from something your doctor can cure. The most common organic causes are diabetes and thyroid dysfunction, but there are many more and it is usually fairly easy to diagnose them. So, especially if you are completely in the dark on just why you feel as exhausted as you do, have a thorough medical checkup done.
Ironically, you may actually be in a burnout process because of diabetes or thyroid malfunction, or some other organic reason. Imagine a person who feels fatigued day after day. That person will begin to resent any activity, including his or her work. But that work usually must be done to keep afloat. The inner conflict of „I don’t wanna do it“ and „I gotta do it“ may be enough to put the person into a subjective „trap“ situation which is probably the starting point of all burnout processes.
However, if you are an „A“ case, your medical doctor may treat you with insulin, thyroxin, or some other medicine — and root out the cause of your malady! If that is so in your case, congratulations.
Particularly in regions of the world where burnout is either an unknown term or a stigma, lots of people wander from one medical doctor to the next (complaining of unspecific symptoms), collect any number of medical diagnoses and treatments, and end up being „mystery cases“. Although many doctors are much more sophisticated here today, „B“ cases are probably much more frequent than „A“ cases.
It is tempting for a General Practitioner (or any medical specialist, at that rate) to prescribe remedies at the physical level. Why? It takes much more time to interview a patient about possible psychological (mostly work-related) problems. And, the patient — in that case, YOU — may be all too happy to try out a new pill rather than face the root cause, which may be painful.
Thus, if your doctor tells you your health „objectively“ is fine (and especially if your medical records already fill a file), consider consulting a psychologist, consultant, or psychiatrist.
