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. Surely, we need to learn to filter out some of this unnecessary noise.

The ordure of everyday life is no longer seen as inevitable but as damaging to our mental health. We demand cures for all of life's misfortunes. When young people complain that they feel 'anxious and stressed' about an upcoming exam, instead of reminding them that such feelings are perfectly rational, we worry that they might be suffering from some kind of 'syndrome' or 'disorder', a 'condition' which we treat with pills, therapy and a safe space.

With social media placing young people in relentless competition with each other, we shouldn’t be surprised that anxiety-related OCD has become such an issue. A survey by a coalition of UK young people's charities found that more than one third of 16 to 25 year-olds had self-harmed.

Anxiety can be crippling – and a genuine condition, but it is also a vital part of human existence; we cannot know the future –our hopes as well as our fears are bound up in this fact. Philip Larkin reminds us that 'Life is first boredom, then fear' but I would argue that boredom itself is what keeps many of us fearful. Filling the void with trivial anxieties or catastrophising about the end of the world gives us a sense of purpose and helps alleviate the tedium. It's why lonely outcasts used to wander the streets in sandwich boards and why Extinction Rebellion activists dye their hair blue and hold drum vigils on Waterloo Bridge.

We forget that a life free from anxiety is intolerably flat and meaningless. Several years ago my doctor prescribed me a course of valium to help treat a bout of depression; while the pills certainly helped lessen the condition they also shielded me from all other emotional responses. Love, disappointment, joy – nothing could get to me; I existed under a hazy blanket of nothingness. The anxiety had gone but so too had my verve for life.

Is life today really more stressful or more catastrophic than it was for previous generations? My ninety-four year old father snorts at what he sees as my trivial concerns; he comes from a generation that learnt to regulate their emotions with proportionate responses. As such, he is far more resilient than I am and a good deal less anxious. Over the course of his long life, he has managed to weather life's storms without ever having to sink into neurotic self-absorption. For him, those knots in the stomach are as natural as a belly laugh.