To wonder why anxiety and depression are so prevalent?

[Triplesalchow]

I am struggling dreadfully at the moment. I have had anxiety for a long time and recently I feel things slipping into depression. I'm getting some professional help.
I'm reluctant to share with many people close to me as I worry they will think I'm jumping on some kind of bandwagon. I know so many people with similar issues, people at work are off sick with it and you can read about how common it is in the media daily. Why is that the case? Was it always like this but it's just being talked about/ diagnosed now? Is it modern living? In which case why can't we as society change our lives to improve our mental health? Nothing really happened in my life to trigger it. Anyone got any insight into this?

I don't believe 'modern living' can cause an increased incidence of mental illness . I don't have any stats to back this up but I am fairly sure that the British society of other periods in history had higher rates of poverty, sexism, over-work, early mortality, abuse, violence etc than we experience today.

Yes, social media can be horribly toxic and damaging to self esteem - but it hardly compares with the trials of the list above.

I do think that modern living can and does cause a reduction in the quality of the average person's mental health - a very different thing to mental illness.

Depression and anxiety are difficult to define because they are emotions as well as illnesses. Everyone gets depressed. People with poor mental health get depressed a lot or go through a prolonged depression at a particular point. People with the mental illness depression quite likely have it for life (or at least years) and are likely to require medication to deal with it (as oppose to a change in lifestyle/circumstance). Same deal with anxiety and stress.

I don't know if the incidence of depression and anxiety as illnesses is massively increased or not. But I certainly think our mental health (as a society) is in a terrible condition. Due to:

• peer pressure, social media
• competitive pressure - education, salaries, working hours
• diet, sleeping patterns and time spent outdoors
• 24/7 media (comparisons, miserable news)
• 24/7 lifestyle - no down time/off switch

There is a massive 'fuzzy' area between the normal and natural feeling of depression when a relative dies or it's simply cold and miserable outside and the debilitating illness that severe clinical depression can be. I think what might have changed is that the people in that fuzzy area would now say that they suffer from anxiety/depression as oppose to saying that they have been feeling down lately or whatever.

"I really doubt that it's 'modern life'. If you compare the life of, well, anyone 100 year ago to your average person today you would be wilfully ingnorabt to say that living conditions are getting worse. I don't think that mental illness is more prevealent just better understood and identified."

Yes and no. People were definitely poorer, but many people lived in the same place all their life, worked with their family or friends and in the same job all their life. Now we have choices and our lives change much more.
The pace of working life is also quicker. Compare an office in the computer age to one with the typewriter.

"Very little water (just fizzy drinks, tea, coffee)"

What? All those things contain lots of water, as do many foods. Fizzy drinks have their own problems of course, but lots of people even carry water bottles around with them these days. We're more preoccupied than ever with drinking water and the 6 or 8 glasses a day thing has been proven as a myth. Most of us are getting more than enough water!

"A counsellor I know thinks all the grim stuff on TV increases depression rates. He tells all his patients to switch off."

That's a bit strange. Does he tell people not to read serious novels or watch plays either? Tragic stories are great fun.

Well in my daughters case, I suspect she is slightly on the spectrum. Coped fine at home and in school; our home is very stable and, having four kids, we are quite hot on routines and being self reliant ans she went to a nurturing school with a big group of friends who had known her forever and had her back.

Uni was a competitive, back stabbing course, lots of group work with unreliable people, sharing a flat with people who were obsessed with image and being cool and who took lots of recreational drugs. Boyfriend graduated, couldn't get the amazing job he thought was his due and became really down. DD tends to mirror the people she is with.

By the end of second year in uni, my lovely vibrant feisty girl wasn't getting out of bed some days, let alone looking after herself properly. Her anxiety was causing debilitating IBS and bladder problems. She was an absolute wreck.

She had some counselling, did some reading, decided to sort herself out. She went to America to work in a kids camp for the summer. God knows how she motivated herself to do it. Spent three months running up mountains and swimming in lakes and eating healthy food. Three months with hardly ant screens or alcohol or drugs and surrounded by people doing positive things with their lives.

She came back like a different person, broke up with the gloomy boyfriend, ditched the bitchy friends. She's working hard and living more healthily and she's happy again.

Speaking personally my lifelong depression and (more recently) anxiety issues are directly related to a very unhealthy, unhappy and traumatic childhood and the close friends I have who also struggle with their mental health have the same issue. I think a lot of things come down to childhood trauma.

I think we as a society are more open to discussing these things and as a result there's a bit of band wagon jumping but overall I do believe we have a lot of traumatised adults struggling with life.

Ted Talks are excellent for all those PP that have mentioned them. For me, a huge trigger for anxiety especially was social media. I was bombarded of imagery of others' perfect to lives and everyone liking each others pictures and posts about how perfect they all were. I felt like what was on screen was real life and I was sat on the outside, gloomily looking in on everyone else's happiness wondering why the only one who seemed to 'like' anything I did was my dog.

I deleted Facebook and never looked back. People think I'm some sort of crazy hipster now but actually I just couldn't handle the constant stress of people having a window into my life and wondering if they 'liked' it.

I also agree that I don't think we are hard wired for modern living. Hormones are chemical signals to and from the brain to tell us what we need/what to do. For example, hormones trigger hunger, tiredness, restlessness and so on to tell us to eat/sleep/move. But with artificial light, demanding jobs and lifestyles and constant high expectation of ourselves and from our peers the hormonal signals just become an emotional shitstorm. That's my way of interpreting it anyway!

I have often wondered if the fashion for tough-parenting, CIO, etc. in previous times has been a cause of the apparent prevalence of anxiety in many people now.

I think this.

To explain my post a bit more:

Hormones: "You are hungry"
Body: "I am hungry"
Brain: "Simmer down it's 2 hours till lunch"
Body: "Oh, ok then"
Hormones: "You are hungry. YOU ARE HUNGRY! Ok now you are hangry"
Brain: "I hate this computer and all my shitty emails. Why are some people so stupid and annoying. Still 1 hour till lunch"
Hormones: HAANGRYYYYY
Brain:

Anxiety is also contagious. People feel it in others and this activates their anxiety.

Anxious thoughts are habitual. We become programmed to negative thoughts far easier than positive thoughts because being aware kept us alive longer when we were in caves.

I also think anxiety has become a bit of a 'thing' (like people used to say 'I'm depressed' or 'I'm a bit OCD' (and some still do of course)) when the person gets anxious in certain situations but doesn't actually have an anxiety disorder. I saw a thing on Facebook recently which said 'Anxiety is waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night...' That's not anxiety, that's normal! DH has a (diagnosed) anxiety disorder - he's not just waking up in a cold swear, he's waking up in a cold sweat and then spending the rest of the night in the toilet throwing up and hiding it from me rather than just do the 5 min job that's stressing him.

There is a lot of anxiety out there and a lot of people do have anxiety and it's good that there's increasing attention on and destymatising of mental health issues but I'm sick of people using anxiety as a throw away term. As some people on this thread have demonstrated anxiety is a massively dehabilitsting condition. It seems to happen all the time on mumsnet that people say they have anxiety when they mean doing something causes them some stress.

In the days before TV, people used to get together and actually speak to each other. I was listening to someone the other day and they were saying that the parks used to be full of families, then when TV really kicked in they were virtually empty of them. The TV has a certain flicker rate that effects the brain, that isn't there by accident.

My great grandmother, grandmother, my grandad, her sons and one other uncle all suffered from anxiety and depression to quite severe degrees.
'Modern living and social media' wasn't even on their radar.

Its no coincidence, I think, that I've barely left the house in 3yrs.

I hate illness being trivialised. It ISN'T a choice and dealing with it ISN'T as easy as 'cutting down screen time'. It's an illness. It's a real thing and it's completely disabling.

Periods of low mood aren't depression.

In some cases is it because people DON’T have stress? Our bodies are made to deal with the stress of wild animals etc and when we are sheltered from those things we have excess nervous energy which can manifest as anxiety. If we had a real threat then we could use up the anxiety feeling then get over it. A bit like how your legs feel if you don’t have exercise. Also potentially why in some cases, exercise massively helps people. (Caveat, note here I say SOME cases). Is his why anxiety is worse now than in the wartime generation who had the fear of war, lack of food etc to worry about?

Somewhat contradicting that musing, I have read that phobias etc can be coded into your DNA. I don’t know much about this or the study but it is an interesting one.

In some other cases mental illnesses are often passed down through families. The strains of living with a severe mental illness with a lack of support can mean the home is chaotic and dysfunctional and possibly deprived financially and educationally. Fortunately this is not the case for the majority of mentally ill people, but this group is still large and requires a lot of resource. I see a lot of this through my work and these children have had a terrible start to life.

Another group I think quite rightly experience a difficult time Eg bereavement and are quite rightly ‘depressed’, traumatised etc and are told to see GP who may prescribe antidepressants. It’s natural to feel dreadful for a significant period of time in this sort of situation.

And many more groups with different reasons ad infinitum. So I think there are a myriad of different reasons for anxiety and depression and other mental illness. They come in differing strengths and have differing solutions. Yes, for some, “pull yourself together” will work but not for all/most. I do think we have medicalised ‘low mood’ in some cases. We are also more aware of the severe cases so there seem to be more of them. Previously people would have tried to hide it.

I'm sick of people using anxiety as a throw away term. As some people on this thread have demonstrated anxiety is a massively dehabilitsting condition. It seems to happen all the time on mumsnet that people say they have anxiety when they mean doing something causes them some stress

But that's surely where the problem and confusion comes in. Because anxiety is a throw away term for something that causes you some stress. It's an emotional state. And it was an emotional state long before it was also the name of a debilitating illness.

So it's not that more people have the illness Anxiety but more people are living in a state of frequent anxiety due to a variety of reasons. There's nothing wrong with saying you are struggling with anxiety if that's what you are feeling. It doesn't make you mentally ill but it's a valid emotion.

Periods of low mood aren't depression

Same problem. That's exactly what depression is. It's not what Clinical Depression is. But it's what the emotion of depression is.

Suggestions like fresh air, less screen time and coffee with friends are fabulous for improving people's mental health. They aren't going to do much to cure a mental illness though. Two different issues with the same names. Hence it seems like the illnesses are massively more prevalent when they probably aren't.

I'm 35 and Ive always been anxious. I was an anxious child, school refused for a lot of my childhood and started having panic attacks at age eight. I was properly diagnosed with GAD about five years ago and have had CBT and medication, which has helped. I think it's become the 'trendy' thing to sa her you have anxiety, when in fact you are just a bit worried about something. Real anxiety is so debilitating, Ive been known to vomit when it's very bad and struggle to leave the house.

There have been strong links to the pill and depression. And other hormone contraceptives like the mirena coil. A study was completed earlier this year (February I think?) With a HUGE sample size and the findings were a very strong correlation between the two, especially in younger women.

My own experience of depression was definitely linked, I'm sure. Though I have only recently realised it as I went on the pill at 14 for heavy/irregular periods. I think many women are the same.

So before you get a chance to really go through the hormonal changes of adolescence your body is bombarded with artificial hormones affecting your body's natural equilibrium.

It is only since having my DD and using a Caya diaphragm instead of hormone contraceptive, I am finding how naturally happy and relaxed I am. When I look back at my lowest and darkest times I was always using a form if hormone contraceptive.

My libido was also squashed to basically nothing. Thankfully that is no longer the case!

@BeerBaby Your first post is spot on.

Hollow I absolutely agree with everything you say about the Pill and depression. And libido.

I genuinely don't think anxiety and depression are any more prevalent today than they were in the past. I do think it was probably hidden behind a general low quality of life and poor health for the vast majority of people.

My DF has done loads of work since he retired on our family tree. I've been pretty gobsmacked to hear about the absolutely shitty lives that most of my ancestors lived.

Most of the women started bearing children in their early twenties, and continued to do so into their late thirties/forties. Most (if not all) lost children in their lives. Very few of the women lived beyond their fifties/sixties.

A good proportion of the men lost their lives due to some form of industrial illness - either in accidents or illnesses that came about as a result of them. Another good proportion died in the war. There are the odd few that ended up in the workhouse after spending their adult lives in and out of various prisons.

My dad says that most of my great-aunts were married to men who dealt with their own mental health issues by spending every evening in the boozer and then going home and beating up their wives/children. Anecdotally, all of my dad's cousins from one aunt wet their beds until they left home and got married.

My parents have lots of family photos of their parents/grandparents and other ancestors. Most of the adults who look about 70/80 are actually in their 50s. Most had lost all their teeth by their 40s I can't imagine my family are particularly unusual.

How do you go about separating mental health issues from generally being a total wreck for most of your adult life and then dying well before old age?

Sweet, I agree with you to some extent. Life was harder, but I do think expectations come into it as well. We expect to do well now. I was led to believe that if I went to university I could have a career, but that never happened. Of course I'm better off than my ancestors who were maids and farm labourers, but they probably never expected any better than long hours and Saturday working. They also wouldn't blame themselves for their failures, it was just the way it was.

Yes, they ended up with terrible husbands and wives and couldn't change it, but divorce wasn't considered an option anyway so people just made do.

I do think increased choices have brought increased pressures.

"I'm sick of people using anxiety as a throw away term. As some people on this thread have demonstrated anxiety is a massively dehabilitsting condition. It seems to happen all the time on mumsnet that people say they have anxiety when they mean doing something causes them some stress

But that's surely where the problem and confusion comes in. Because anxiety is a throw away term for something that causes you some stress. It's an emotional state. And it was an emotional state long before it was also the name of a debilitating illness. "

I am personally sick of people who claim to have a monopoly over a certain word. Someone diagnosed with an anxiety disorder can't tell other people who are feeling anxious that they're not allowed to use the word.
By the way, it seems to be fine to use the word 'sick' as a throw away term!

But I do think it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking 'people had shittier lives and lower expectations but were happier'. In reality, most people had shittier lives and lower expectations and spent a great deal of time being anxious and depressed as well as poor.

"In reality, most people had shittier lives and lower expectations and spent a great deal of time being anxious and depressed as well as poor."

How do you know?

I agree with many of the reasons already given, modern life, screens, overwork. I also think gratitude for what you have can lessen depression and one thing my mum always instilled in me was working on having joie de vivre (sp?) which to me is taking pleasure in the small and simple things in life, perhaps some would rename this now as mindfulness. My mum can never go anywhere quickly, she will be stopping and noticing things, chatting to someone along the way, was so frustrating when we were younger! She takes a lot of pleasure in art, reading, nature which I have tried to pass onto my children. Not going through your life rushing around, slowing down and noticing changes in nature, listening to what someone has to say, taking pleasure in your food. Adult 'play' through art, cooking, reading, listening to music is important to balance with responsibilities.