This week on the Food for Thought podcast, I’m with Mary Heath author of Get your life back, A Twelve-Week Journey to Overcome Stress, Anxiety and Depression published by Findhorn Press, she’s also a yoga teacher, and International Stress Management Consultant, and we are discussing stress and how her book is a great resource to use to reduce it.
The statistics for stress related illness now are truly saddening with 75-90% of doctor visits the patients are suffering from stress related problems, an astonishing amount, with many of those people being placed onto medication. My own research showed that 1 out of every 6 of the population in Blackpool in the UK are on antidepressants, and there were in 2012/13 50 million prescriptions written for antidepressants. I believe we are creating an anxiety culture, and it’s affecting those in the workplace.
Sadly the cost to health isn’t really where our government focus’s we tend to cost this out on how financially it affects our economies world wide and it’s huge in regards to stress related disorders. Mary highlights in the interview how stress costs the UK economy £3.7 billion every year, US numbers is $300 billion every year, which by our calculations means that each person in the US costs $1000, the EU estimates that it affects 40 million of the population.
With World Health Organisation statistics showing that stress and depression is the leading cause of disability world wide, why aren’t we doing more to resolve this, and I ask Mary how our society has created such a stress and anxiety related culture. Why is this important well we discuss the rates of suicide that are now happening in our 15-29 year olds, rates that have increased 60% over the past 45 years. Our youth counseling services at universities have grown by between 10-50% in one year! Reports from Education bodies are showing that 115,000 students are using counseling services, and that where previously it was for homesickness, loneliness and relationship breakups, the usual youngster away from home stuff, now it’s financial worries, performance worries, and not getting a job stress. What are we doing to our youth?
Are we teaching our children to be stressed? We discuss the life skills that are not taught in schools that are now so needed and how our NHS services are not equipped to deal with increasing numbers leaving the majority of people to deal with depression, stress and anxiety by themselves.
I had to ask from Mary’s perspective what are we creating in our world for this to be the way it is?
I ask are the demands that we put on ourselves or other’s put on us now unrealistic?
We discuss how stress is almost a factor in our lives from birth, and even before it in some cases.
Understand how this 12 week resource can give you key tools to use that will help not only yourself but potentially your children and teenagers, in what is looking like an anxiety culture.
