Stress, the “health epidemic of the 21^st century”, affects all of us

So, a couple of months back I was invited to present a talk about ‘stress’ at the Putney Clinic of Physical Therapy http://www.putneyclinic.co.uk. I spent a little time doing some research. What struck me is how big a problem stress is, and how many of us are affected. It’s rife. Here is some science. In 2015/16, work related stress in the UK accounted for 37% of all work related ill health cases and 45% of all working days lost http://www.hse.gov.uk.

1 in 5 people believe that their job is very stressful. The CBI say that stress has overtaken the common cold as the biggest cause of absenteeism in the work place at a cost to industry of £17bn. These are just work related statistics; they don’t take account of everyone: people who work from home or people who don’t work, so the numbers for ‘stressed out’ are even greater. The world health organization call stress the “health epidemic of the 21^st century”. No surprise to you that London is the most stressed out city in the UK.

Why are we so stressed?

Well first we can’t avoid stress, a certain amount is healthy and natural. It motivates us and our own stress system was designed to warn us and keep us safe. Unmanaged stress, though, can be harmful.

These days when we have so much equipment designed to make our lives easier, it doesn’t appear to make sense that we are more stressed than we were 50 years ago. One of the reasons could be that the amount of information that we process has doubled in the last 20 years.

Oliver James in his book Affluenza says that we are suffering from affluenza. This desire to “keep-up-with-the-Joneses”, the addiction to affluence and the need for more and more stuff has resulted in increases in depression and anxiety world-wide. Within our families and at home and at work, we are not content to sit back and rest on past wins we keep pushing ourselves, our kids or both.

Both Oliver James and the statistics show that stress is not unique, none of us are immune. We all share this in common, we all get stressed at some time, so it’s nothing to be ashamed of.  Yet many of us are just that and don’t want to talk about it, believing that we “should be able to cope”

I am going to discuss stress in a lot more detail in later posts.  Feel free though to drop me a line and ask me questions.