Quick answer: the WHO classifies burn-out as an occupational phenomenon, not a medical condition, and says the term applies to the work context only. Depression is a medical condition and is not confined to work. The most useful discriminating question is about scope: does the flatness stop at the office door, or does it cover everything? If it covers everything, or if it has lasted more than two weeks most of the day, stop sorting categories and see a doctor.

This question gets asked constantly, and it is usually answered with a tidy table that overstates how cleanly the two separate. The honest version is messier: the constructs overlap substantially, plenty of people meet the description of both, and the boundary is a clinical judgement rather than something a checklist settles.

That does not make the question useless. It changes what the question is for. You are not trying to reach a diagnosis. You are trying to work out whether this is a situation to manage with load and recovery, or a situation to bring to a professional.

What the classification actually says

In ICD-11, burn-out (QD85) is described as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed, with three dimensions: exhaustion, mental distance or cynicism toward the job, and reduced professional efficacy. The WHO is explicit on two points: it is not classified as a medical condition, and the term should not be applied to experiences in other areas of life.

Depression, by contrast, is a medical condition with clinical criteria, and nothing about it requires a job. That difference in status matters practically: there is no validated diagnostic instrument that will tell you that you "have burnout", while depression can be assessed and treated.

The questions that discriminate best

Question Points toward burnout Points toward depression
Where does the flatness apply?Mainly to work. Weekends and people outside work still land, even if faintly.Everywhere. Things you used to love feel the same as things you never liked.
What happens on a real holiday?Genuine relief, which fades some weeks after returning.Little change. The break does not touch it.
How do you talk about yourself?"This job is pointless." Cynicism aimed outward, at the work."I am worthless." Guilt and self-blame aimed inward.
Is there an identifiable load?Yes — months of hours, conflict, no control or no support.Often none, or out of proportion to it.
Physical pictureExhaustion, poor sleep, tension.Also appetite and weight change, early waking, psychomotor slowing.
Thoughts of self-harm?Not part of the construct.Possible — and an immediate reason to get help.

Read that table as a set of tendencies, not a decision procedure. Several rows can point in different directions at once, and that is normal.

Why the overlap is real

Exhaustion, poor sleep, low mood, irritability, difficulty concentrating and loss of pleasure appear in both descriptions. The overlap between burnout and depressive symptoms is well documented in the research literature, and it is one reason burn-out has no clinical diagnostic criteria in ICD-11 in the first place.

They also share a causal channel. Chronic unmanaged work stress is not a neutral background condition; it is one of the contexts in which depressive symptoms can develop. So "burnout that became depression" is not a category error — it is a common trajectory, and the reason waiting is expensive.

What changes depending on the answer

Stop self-assessing if any of this is true

These are not subtle signals, and none of them is a reason to collect two more weeks of data:

France's Haute Autorité de Santé has published clinical guidance on identifying and managing occupational exhaustion syndrome, including its differential diagnosis with depressive disorders — it is aimed at clinicians, and it exists precisely because this distinction is a clinical one.

Where a tracking app fits — and where it does not

Pulse measures conditions associated with chronic stress: sleep, HRV, resting heart rate, activity, phone use, hours, and how you report feeling. It can show you that a load is building and that recovery is not happening. That is genuinely useful early, and at the level of drift.

It cannot tell you whether you are depressed, and it does not try. No consumer app can. If your reading of this page was "some of the right-hand column is me", the next step is a person, not a chart.

Sources

Track the load, not the label

Pulse follows the signals associated with chronic stress and shows you when they are drifting — without pretending to diagnose anything.

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