*Excerpt from BBC reporting by Features Correspondent Sophi Hardach
The U.S Surgeon General has issued an advisory on an epidemic trend of parental burnout. In fact 68% of U.S. parents have experienced some level of burnout, with 40% having experienced serious burnout. Where might we look for a solution and what might it look like?
Germany is possibly the only country in the world where struggling parents are legally entitled to a “Kur”, a health retreat of about three weeks, every four years. A Kur is prescribed by a doctor, and mostly funded by insurance. Meals, childcare and therapies are all included. Crucially, the retreat can be done not just to treat a health problem but also as a preventative measure to stop relatively mild problems from ballooning into worse ones.
Karols G
For example, Sebastian Schwerk lay awake at night, his mind racing. His father had recently died of leukemia. Schwerk had been caring for him for months, together with his siblings, as well as looking after his own family. Now his mother needed care, too. His two older children were going through puberty. And he worried that with so much going on, his youngest son wasn’t getting enough attention.
He decided to apply for an insurance-funded retreat as a preventative measure, and to treat his insomnia. “My main need was really to spend as much time as possible with my son, without stress, and to get back into a healthier lifestyle,” he says. He and his youngest son spent three weeks at a seaside clinic.
Schwerk took courses in muscle relaxation therapy, meditation, Nordic walking and yoga, none of which he had tried before. Some may thin it sounds like a vacation however; research shows that the retreats are very effective in preventing far worse health problems. Some also argue, however, that growing demand for them should ring alarm bells, as a signal that more and more parents are cracking under the strain of everyday life. The lingering impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns appears to have worsened that pressure.
Keira Burton
Yvonne Bovermann, director of Deutsches Müttergenesungswerk, a non-profit organization that runs some 70 clinics offering retreats says, “The vast majority of our retreats are meant to be preventative. But the clinics say that a large proportion of the women, about 30%, already arrive in a much worse state, where you would offer treatment, not prevention.”
The most common problems are psychological problems such as anxiety, insomnia, or depressive symptoms, which now affect over 90% of the parents who come to their retreats, Bovermann says – up from previously 80%. “In addition, almost all of them have physical problems, such as knee pain or back pain. But the reason they go on a retreat isn’t the knee pain, it’s that they just don’t know how to get through the day anymore.”
Early attendees, after World War II included mothers suffering from the effects of war and malnourishment, while caring for traumatized children and husbands. Today, a different kind of familial stress is gaining increasing attention not just in Germany but around the world – “parental burnout.”
Ron Lach
And, global research highlights the profound impact of parental burnout – which is defined as “a state of overwhelming exhaustion related to one’s parental role, an emotional distancing from one’s children, and a sense of parental ineffectiveness”. In addition to being a stress trigger for the parents, burnout also raises the risk of violence against children and child neglect. Parents’ stress and emotional exhaustion can also affect their children in other ways. Parental depression increases the likelihood actually increases the chance of children suffering from depression themselves and has been further been linked to development of behavioral problems.
Research suggests that while a three-week retreat can’t magically solve these problems, it can have a strong impact on individual mothers and fathers – and even bring lasting benefits.