Burnout Rehabilitation

For centuries, magi have feared the possibility of burning out, losing their powers and never knowing when, or if, they will return. But now, in the country of Chelestra, burned out magi have reason to hope. In the last decade of the Great War with Kinilan, Honarist Eilieren began developing a rehabilitation program, having observed similarities in recovery between burned out magi under his care and soldiers healing from debilitating injuries. Much as a person suffering a severe injury may need months of carefully controlled exercise to recover their strength, so to do burned out magi need slow, careful retraining to recover their capabilities.

Methodology

To properly administer this rehabilitation therepy, the therapist must be careful to adapt their technique to an individual patients' needs. Burnout presents in a variety of ways, and inappropriate treatments can have no effect or worse, worsen the injury.
Many patients report they can no longer feel the forces of magic around them, likening it to having suddenly been struck blind on a metaphysical level. For these patients, therapy generally starts with a return to fundamental training - the earliest lessons any apprentice is taught are designed to train them to sense the patterns of magic around them, a sense that is fundamental to learning to control that magic and give it form. Such lessons sometimes don't go over well, particularly for more experienced magi; many see such basic techniques as beneath them. Once a patient recovers this sense, they often begin to suffer the painful symptoms other magi report.
The other major symptom of burnout is a painful sense that overwhelms any ability to cast spells - for some this is a searing pain that scatters their thoughts as soon as they begin the process of shaping magic into a spell, while others find their mind slowed (or frozen, as it is often described), capable of going through all the motions of casting a spell, but so slowly that it fails to capture any energy to empower it. Eilieren's theory likens this to an overtaxed muscle, suggesting that the patient's ability to channel magic into useful forms has been overly strained. To recover from this, extremely simple spells have been developed - disempowered versions of the simple cantrips taught to apprentices early in their training. The therapist and their patient must go through an excrutiating process of finding a level of power where the patient feels the strain of casting the spell, but not so much as to cause pain and thus risk further injury. What follows is a long, slow process of slowly incrementing the amount of magic used in spells, with frequent resting periods so as to avoid any chance of pushing so hard that it induces a secondary burnout.

Effectiveness

Even with this process, burnout is still a terrible fate for any magus. The rehabilitation process is long and painful, demanding immense mental fortitude of its patients. But, without the rehab, patients suffering burnout that lasts longer than 1 week once had only a 5% chance of ever casting spells again, and only 10% of those recovering to the same capacity they had before their injury. But already, nearly 50% of those undergoing rehab have recovered their ability to control magic, and 70% of those have reached or exceeded the capacity they had prior to the injury. This success has led to a keen interest from the magically inclined in Chelestra, and has begun to reach the ears of the powerful in other countries.