About Specialties Anxiety & Depression Burnout Relationships & Couples ADHD Trauma & PTSD Sexual Health & Intimacy Philosophy Fees & Insurance Speaking Contact Request Consultation →
Practice / Burnout
"Very knowledgeable about decision making in a critical situation and always has alternatives. In a situation where I almost lost a job, I consulted with him and changed the outcome."
— Hubert P. · Patient
Psychiatrist & Therapist · San Francisco

Burnout treatment in San Francisco, for people who've earned it the hard way.

Burnout isn't about being weak or unmotivated. It's what happens when high-performing people sustain maximum output for too long, in systems that rarely give back what they take. Andrew has spent his career working with professionals — clinicians, executives, Naval officers — who have given everything to their work and are now running on empty. His experience on both sides of the clinical relationship gives him a lens on burnout that most therapists and psychiatrists in San Francisco simply don't have. The World Health Organization now classifies burnout as an occupational syndrome — the result of chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed (WHO, ICD-11). Among physicians alone, nearly half report at least one symptom of burnout (American Medical Association, 2024).

Request a Consultation
What It Looks Like

What burnout actually
feels like from the inside.

Exhaustion that doesn't improve with rest

Emotional detachment or cynicism about work that used to feel meaningful

Declining performance despite increased effort

Difficulty making decisions or concentrating

Sense of going through the motions

Increasing irritability or impatience

Physical symptoms — headaches, GI distress, recurring illness

Loss of professional identity or purpose

Dread of going to work

Why burnout isn't
solved by working less.

Burnout is not simply an excess of work — it's a collapse of the relationship between effort and meaning. You can reduce hours and still be burned out; you can work long hours and not be burned out. The critical variable is whether the work continues to feel like something you're doing versus something being done to you. Across industries, more than half of employees report experiencing burnout, with the highest rates among healthcare workers, tech professionals, and mid-career professionals carrying the greatest organizational responsibility (Shanafelt et al., Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2025).

The people Andrew works with aren't burned out because they don't care. They're burned out precisely because they do — and that distinction matters for how recovery actually works.

Andrew's particular background here.

Andrew spent 12 years in the US Navy, completed his psychiatric residency at the only military program to select a civilian, and holds a graduate degree from Stanford in design thinking. These aren't resume points — they're the basis of a genuinely different clinical lens on what high-performance environments demand and what they cost. He works with physicians, executives, tech leaders, and other professionals who need a psychiatrist who actually understands the environment they're trying to recover from.

What recovery looks like.

Recovery from burnout typically involves several parallel tracks: rebuilding clarity about what matters and what doesn't, addressing the beliefs and patterns that made the unsustainability possible, making practical changes to workload or environment, and treating any co-occurring depression or anxiety that has developed. Andrew works across all of these, within one ongoing clinical relationship.

Andrew sees patients for burnout in person at his Pacific Heights office — conveniently located for those coming from Presidio Heights, Cow Hollow, the Marina, and Nob Hill — and via telehealth throughout California.

You've given a lot.
It's time to get something back.

Andrew is accepting new patients in San Francisco. The first call is complimentary — no paperwork, no commitment.

Request a Consultation
Questions

Common questions
about burnout.

Anything else — the complimentary phone call is the right place to ask.

Burnout is recognized by the WHO as an occupational phenomenon — not a medical diagnosis in the traditional sense, but a real and serious state that produces measurable physical and psychological effects. It often co-occurs with depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders that do require clinical treatment. Andrew addresses both the burnout itself and any clinical conditions that have developed alongside it.
Time off helps, but it's rarely sufficient on its own. Burnout involves a fundamental shift in how you relate to your work, your identity, and your sense of capability — and those don't reset with a vacation. Without addressing the underlying patterns and meanings, most people return from time off and slide back into the same state within weeks.
Yes. Clinician burnout is a significant focus of Andrew's practice. As a physician himself, he understands the culture, the pressures, and the particular ways that medicine shapes identity and erodes wellbeing. He sees physicians, nurses, therapists, and other healthcare professionals, and brings both clinical expertise and genuine understanding to that work.
Treatment begins with understanding what's driving the burnout — the workload, the environment, the meaning structure, the personal history. From there, Andrew's approach typically combines individual therapy (examining what's driving the unsustainability), practical restructuring (workload, systems, boundaries), and when applicable, medication for co-occurring depression or anxiety. The goal is not just recovery but building a relationship with your work that isn't fundamentally exploitative.
Not necessarily. Some people need a significant change — a role shift, a sabbatical, an organizational change. Others can recover within their current situation by changing how they work, what they're protecting, and how they interpret what happens to them. Andrew helps you figure out which situation you're in and what the realistic path forward looks like.
Clinically reviewed by Andrew Chacko, MD · April 2026