Academic burnout is a serious issue that affects a wide range of students each year (Honicke & Broadbent, 2016; Luo, Wang, Zhang, Chen & Quan, 2016; Rahmati, 2015). However, as numerous researchers show, the development and acquisition of self-esteem by students can actually help to alleviate stress and increase one’s academic performance (Arshad, Zaidi & Mahmood; 2015; Fernández González, González Hernández & Trianes Torres, 2015). Self-esteem is defined as confidence in oneself and in one’s self-worth or value, and it is similar to the concept of self-efficacy, which is a belief in one’s ability to succeed at certain tasks (Arshad et al., 2015; Rahmati, 2015). What researchers have shown is that the more self-efficacy or self-esteem a student possesses, the more likely that student is to succeed academically (Arshad et al., 2015; Honicke & Broadbent, 2016; Rahmati, 2015). The reason for this is that students who esteem themselves highly and have a sense of their capacity for knowledge acquisition tend to know what it takes to stay on top of their academic tasks and duties and therefore are better able to manage their academic career. Those who are not so self-aware or self-knowledgeable tend to get in over their heads and thus experience academic burnout. They become easily stressed, overloaded and unable to cope with the demands of the college life. They find no strength within themselves to rise up and take ownership...

This in turn leads them to abandon the pursuit altogether sometimes or else to continue through but always receiving low grades and thus coming out with a sub-par performance.
While self-esteem is an important variable in understanding the effects of stress on academic performance, another important variable is gender (Arshad et al., 2015). Female students may not have as high of self-esteem as male students in college, but they do tend to achieve a high level of academic performance nonetheless (Arshad et al., 2015). One reason for this may be that female students have significant social support systems in place and maintain a generally optimistic outlook—two more variables which have been associated with keeping stress levels down so that academic focus can be maintained (Fernández González et al., 2015). Aside from these two variables, others have also been identified, such as having goals set for oneself, having the capacity to regulate effort and engage in deep processing, and having parents who are involved in one’s life and can offer emotional support (Honicke & Broadbent, 2016). All of these factors have been found to be important in the mediation of stress and the ability to keep school burnout at bay.

Burnout has been described as the effect of overwhelming stress in a student’s life (Luo et al., 2016; Rahmati, 2015) and the main mediating factors in alleviating stress that have…