Burnout, before and after the collapse
The Netherlands takes burnout more seriously than almost anywhere. There is a recognised pathway: the company doctor, the sick note, the phased return. It is humane, it is well intentioned, and for many people it is enough.
It struggles with one group in particular: the people for whom burnout is not simply exhaustion.
Some people collapse because they have been working too hard. Others have been working that hard for a reason, and the reason is the thing to treat. Someone who cannot stop, who feels fraudulent when resting, who has built an identity out of capacity, will complete a phased return and be back in the same position within eighteen months. The programme cured the tiredness and left the structure underneath it untouched.
What is actually being treated
Rarely the hours. Usually what the hours were doing.
Work can hold off a great deal: anxiety, a marriage that has gone quiet, grief that was never given room, the conviction that you are only tolerable while producing. Remove the work and all of it arrives at once, which is why rest can feel so much worse than effort and why so many people cut their recovery short.
This is slower and more interesting than a return-to-work plan. It asks what the working was for, what it was keeping at a distance, and what would need to be true for stopping to be bearable.
Who comes
Founders and senior people at the multinationals in Amsterdam and the Randstad. Internationals whose family and oldest friends are in another country and whose whole social world is colleagues. People two or three years into a relocation who have realised that the new life is as demanding as the old one and that there is now nobody nearby who remembers them being different.
And, often, people who have already been through the Dutch pathway once and do not want to be here again in two years.
How it works
Online by secure video, in English or French, on Dutch time. The Netherlands is one hour ahead of the UK, so late-afternoon and early-evening Dutch appointments are straightforward.
There is no waiting list. Dutch mental health services had more than 101,000 people waiting to begin treatment in October 2025, with an average wait of twenty-four weeks. A first conversation here can usually be arranged within days.
Where burnout has become depression, or where there is drinking underneath it, that is treated as part of the same work rather than referred on. See also addiction and trauma and EMDR.
Beginning
A first conversation is confidential and without commitment. Book here.
Back to psychotherapy in the Netherlands.
Dr Philippe Jacquet is a UKCP registered psychotherapist, a Jungian analyst and an HCPC registered art psychotherapist, with twenty-five years of clinical practice. His Professional Doctorate in Analytical Psychology at the University of Essex examined male eating disorders from the perspective of analytical psychology. Registration can be checked on either public register.
How the work is delivered from here
All international sessions are by secure video, in English or French. Online therapy is not a reduced version of consulting room work: it is the format that lets weekly work survive living abroad, travelling, or relocating. Sessions run in United Kingdom hours, which suits most regions, and if your time zone makes none of it workable, say so when you enquire rather than assuming it rules you out.
For clinicians and treatment services
Dr Jacquet supervises clinical teams in private residential addiction treatment and in a private psychiatric hospital. For treatment centres, psychiatric units and group practices looking for external clinical supervision, including in places where no supervisor of this seniority is available locally, team supervision is also delivered by video. For individual practitioners, see clinical supervision.
Common questions
How is this different from what the company doctor offers?
The occupational pathway treats the exhaustion and manages the return to work, and it does that well. This work addresses what made the overworking necessary in the first place, which is the part that decides whether it happens again.
Is it coaching or therapy?
Both are available and the boundary is agreed openly at the start. Dr Jacquet is a psychotherapist and Jungian analyst with an executive coaching formation from ESSEC, so the work can stay practical and performance-focused, or go further, depending on what the person wants.
Do I have to be signed off work?
No. A great deal of this work is with people still functioning, often at a high level, who can feel that something is giving way. That is an easier place to begin from than a collapse.