More people in Australia are anxious than depressed, according to the results of a survey published last week into the state of the nation’s health.
The Alere Wellness Index, powered by Roy Morgan Research, tracks Australia’s health over time. It found that anxiety has overtaken depression as the second most common mental health concern among Australians (stress being the first).
The survey, which was administered to random members of the public, asked them to rate their levels of wellness and everyday distress.
In the previous year to March 2014, 2.8 million Australian adults (15.6%) said they were suffering from anxiety, which is an increase from 1.5 million (9.2%) in the year to March 2008. Many people who contributed to the survey were unemployed or under employed and reported that their lack of work situation contributed towards their levels of anxiety.
Yet Australia is an affluent nation with unemployment only running at around 5% which is very low compared with other Western countries that were hit much harder by the global financial crisis of the past several years.
So what are the factors that are stressors for people?
– The disparity between the very wealthy and poor certainly has increased during those years, which frequently leads to attitudes of life dissatisfaction among the working and middle classes. Government financial support for those getting into the workplace has also been reduced along with supplemental welfare benefits.
– With the incoming right-wing government, the prospects for the poor and lower middle-class families to do well and provide a good education for their children has diminished along with a reduction in living standards.
– For the young it has become increasingly more difficult to get on the property ladder in the previous year, with a property boom in some major cities of up to 15-20% increase in the price of a first home.
– The medical profession habitually pushing medication on people reporting anxiety has led to chronic anxiety because people delay dealing with their problems which may be personal, family-related, social, work-related or financial.
– When people are in an unhappy relationship or the dynamics of the family are not going well, this always causes both overt and underlying anxiety.
So what can you do to relieve that anxiety?
- Be healthy in your body
- Get regular exercise twice weekly
- Eat foods that give you energy and nourish you, rather than junk
- Address and work though the source of the anxiety
- Be flexible around new circumstances
- Practise discipline of mind (I teach people self-hypnosis)
- Practise gratitude: Focus on the positive things you do have in your life at the present time
Ultimately recovery from anxiety depends on you committing to doing the work that needs to be done to change your mind and life. If you commit to changing your life, the likelihood is that the changes can happen quickly.
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