  The presence of magnetic fields and/or transport currents can cause
penetration of vortices in superconductors. Their motion leads to dissipation
and resistive state arises, which in turn strongly affects the performance of
superconducting devices such as single-photon and single-electron detectors.
Therefore, an understanding of the dissipation mechanisms in mesoscopic
superconductors is not only of fundamental value but also very important for
further technological advances. In the present work, we analyzed the
contributions and interplay of the dissipative mechanisms due to the locally
induced electric field and an intrinsic relaxation of the superconducting order
parameter, $\Psi$, in mesoscopic samples by using the time-dependent
Ginzburg-Landau theory. Although often neglected, we show that the dissipated
energy due to relaxation of $\Psi$ must be taken into account for an adequate
description of the total dissipated energy. The local increase of the
temperature due to vortex motion and its diffusion in the sample were also
analyzed, where the joint effect of thermal relaxation and vortex dynamics
plays an important role for the dissipative properties presented by the
superconducting systems.
