The truth about the anxiety epidemic

Knots in the stomach? An overwhelming sense of despair? Nervous, restless and tense? That’ll be the anxiety talking and for good reason. What with the financial crash, austerity, Brexit partisanship, climate change catastrophising, social media derangement, pandemic pandemonium and now the possibility of a third world war, I’d be concerned if we weren’t all feeling a tad anxious. Indeed NHS leaders are now urging ministers to tackle what they are calling a ‘second pandemic’ of depression, anxiety, psychosis and eating disorders, brought about by recent events. Indeed, one study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry found that diagnoses of anxiety had tripled in young adults since 2008.

It’s right that we take mental illness seriously. But it’s concerning that even the most mundane irritations are hastily attributed to a medicalised form of worry. In their book The Coddling of the American Mind Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt reveal how ‘safetyism’, microaggressions, identity politics and intersectionality have weakened young people’s resilience to such an extent that they even demand ‘protection’ from arguments they find uncomfortable.

Meanwhile the news networks treat every story with the same breathless hyperbole; when every event is described as ‘unprecedented’, is it any wonder that many of us are over-anxious wrecks? There are entire industries designed to keep us anxious, either for our own good as with social justice activism or for the good of advertisers whose job it is to keep consumers feeling inadequate.