Surveys show that every second employee already suffers from severe deadline and performance pressure – with dramatic consequences: The number of mental illnesses and associated days of incapacity to work in Germany has risen by more than 80 percent in the last 15 years. Every second early retirement and 40 percent of the time lost are due to mental illness. Up to 13 million employees in Germany are already affected by burnout, according to estimates by health experts and health insurance companies. One way of preventing burnout and a sensible therapy option is golf, as a study by Dr. Petra Sommer shows.
Burnout as a form of depression
The cause is said to be a professional or other overload in coping with life, usually triggered by stress. However, according to Petra Sommer, burnout is not simply an overload, but represents a form of depression, i.e. “falling into a deep hole”. “Suffering is less taboo today,” says the expert. “Affected people are now more likely to admit to it and actively counteract it with a variety of methods.” According to the psychologist Louis Lewitan, burnout is particularly common in idealistic professions: “It results from a combination of self-exploitation, lack of self-esteem and the fact that work becomes the focus of one’s life. Everything else in life then has no relevance whatsoever.” A typical consequence of this illness is that those affected can no longer manage everyday activities that they have mastered well up to that point. “It starts with getting up, which becomes an almost impossible task for burnout sufferers. This subjective feeling of powerlessness can affect every occupational group, top managers as well as simple workers or housewives,” Sommer adds.
Trigger for burnout – golf against burnout
The trigger of the burnout syndrome is often a stressful situation. Stress is often interpreted as something brought on from the outside, but according to Sommer, it can also have banal and not immediately visible causes. “Everyday environmental sounds or a harmless illness can be enough to force the burnout, i.e. to bring the barrel to overflowing”. But there are also endogenous triggers for a feeling of stress. From a purely medical point of view, sufferers experience a drop in serotonin levels, the relaxation hormone, and an increase in cortisol levels, the stress hormone. Suddenly these people feel stressed, although sometimes, objectively speaking, there is no trigger”, Petra Sommer explains this phenomenon. Burnout also depends on how the body reacts to certain stress situations. “If it can handle stress well, the hormone levels remain in the normal range. However, if high cortisol levels also manifest themselves in nonstress situations, then it is burnout,” says Sommer.
Golf as an object of investigation
In order to investigate the positive effect of golf on a hormonal imbalance, she undertook a comprehensive test series with 493 test persons, in which 396 golfers tee off and 97 test persons did nothing in their function as reference group. “We chose golf as the subject of the study because it is considered a moderate endurance sport, where you are out in the fresh air, move around and have no classic opponent as in many other sports. The social aspect also plays a major role in golf,” Sommer argues. As a result, it was found that cortisol levels dropped noticeably when playing golf and serotonin and dopamine (happiness hormone) levels rose. Surprisingly, the effect was greater in female golfers than in their male counterparts. Height, handicap and age did not play a role. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Golf against burnout
In addition to drug therapies and psychotherapeutic treatments, motor-physical activities can also promote the self-healing process in a disease such as burnout syndrome. Psychosomatic clinics already work a lot with sports therapies. Moderate training such as yoga or Nordic walking, wellness and relaxation are intended to improve the state of depression in patients off medication. The test results of the summer study show that golf can also be a sensible therapy option. Regular playing normalizes the hormone situation, so that the burnout syndrome can be controlled in the medium term, says Petra Sommer. The golf game stress test showed that the values improved even in the test persons who believed that golf could not cause anything. “The therapy achieves its effect regardless of subjective sensation, because the body reacts positively to the sport all by itself,” she states. Golf helps to balance out stress if the sport is not practiced too doggedly, confirms Levitan: “Only the goal of winning under all circumstances cannot be healthy. Anyone who fights against himself and has himself as an opponent will not find relaxation in sport. The joy of the game must be preserved.”
Preventing the disease with verve
Golf can have a positive effect on stress and burnout diseases, Sommer is convinced with regard to the study results: “Golf makes you happy and also helps prophylactically. I believe that golf training in psychosomatic clinics could have a great effect”. The St. Lukas Specialist Clinic in Bad Griesbach is already one of the first to offer golf as a burnout therapy. VcG Managing Director Marco Paeke is also convinced of the positive effects of golf: “Golf clears the mind. Just hitting the balls on the driving range is the best anti-stress training. I therefore believe, also in view of Dr. Sommer’s results, that this sport is very well suited to help burnout sufferers or people at risk of burnout”.
