Pawel Mowlik knows exactly what burnout is. As an international financier working in hedge funds, he was making millions of dollars a month. But by the age of 24, his life was wildly out of control. “Private jets, yachts, parties, going days without sleep… and also constantly working,” he says, reliving his memories with characteristic intensity. “I developed a lot of unhealthy habits: alcohol, cocaine, sedatives.”

For years he had no off button. Then his body and brain found their own. “I developed a kind of depression; there was no satisfaction in my life,” he says. “But how to stop? I knew I couldn’t do it on my own. I just wanted peace.”

Like many of the super-rich, Mowlik learnt that while from the outside life can look like the pinnacle of success, on the inside it can feel like a pressurised nightmare. And the higher you go, the worse the pressure gets and often the greater the crash, imperilling not only individuals but often corporations and dynasties.

The term burnout (taken from New York’s drug-addict argot) was first used by Dr Herbert Freudenberger to describe care workers suffering exhaustion, headaches, stomachaches, insomnia and breathing troubles as a result of overwork. By the eighties, Christina Maslach, a psychology professor at the…