Why I’m so worried about this new age of anxiety

HIGH anxiety? Don’t look down, but it’s everywhere. Giant rugby player Joe Marler is so anxious about playing for England that he has announced his early retirement from the international game; Nigella Lawson says being anxious has made her stop drinking, because it leads to ‘a horrible tight feeling of worry’.

We appear to be living in a new age of anxiety, with a reported UK-wide increase in feelings of apprehension and dread.

perhaps it is hardly surprising, given the current political situation, that for many of us there is no longer any comfort in a nice big glass of panic attack as we careen towards the void.

anxiety is one of the emotions that has been in the headlines during this week’s World Mental health Day. Being anxious is the new black (cloud).

For a start, I’m rather anxious about the Government’s new £1.9 billion plan to improve mental health in schools, starting with assessments for children as young as four.

What then? a pill for every ill, an indelible mark on junior’s medical record, a cloud to follow them around for the rest of their schooldays?

Never mind small children with developing minds and understandable feelings of confusion, are there any of us who would not qualify for some sort of diagnosis if the right questions were asked?

THAT is one reason why it’s hard not to get completely lost in this current quagmire, where there seems to be little demarcation between serious mental health issues and what often doesn’t amount to much more than lifestyle complaints.

Getting a dose of the glums, going through the blues, being swamped by low moods — aren’t they all just part of a storm front that will pass in the typhoon of life?

Sometimes one can feel that anxiety is less of a psychiatric problem and more of an intelligent response to the vagaries of living.

take harlequins prop Joe Marler, who has played for England since 2012 but never felt comfortable with the honour. he appears to have given up his international career at the age of 28 because he found it hard to cope with the stress and anxiety, resulting in mood swings at home. Who could blame him? the pressure of representing your country at the highest sporting level must be immense. and while some will have the strength of character to deal with it, some will not. that doesn’t make Joe ill, it just makes him human. Meanwhile, we all know that Nigella has not had to seek out problems. I certainly agree with her sympathetic World Mental health Day tweet that: ‘No one ever knows how hard anyone else has found it just to get through the day.’ Or, indeed, the courage it takes for some just to get up and walk out of their front door every morning. and while I would never, ever underestimate the crippling, terrible effects of depression — or the bravery of those people who struggle with it — isn’t there a danger that, increasingly, plain old negative emotions are seen as an indication of a condition, before being swept up into a diagnosis? all of which suggests that, for some, happiness is a thing that can be demanded, supplied via prescription and delivered by medication in the quest for a blissful life. When someone is truly suffering from a mental illness, it is not an absence of happiness that is the issue. It is more that they are trapped in a hideous waking nightmare — one that has a ripple effect for everyone in their circle. these poor souls need all the help they can get, and I speak as someone who once had to help section a friend who had schizophrenia along with other complications. those months before we managed to get her into a psychiatric ward and access the help she needed were truly terrifying.

Going through that experience today, with underfunded mental health resources, would be even more frightening — especially with waiting rooms and patient lists swamped with those whose everyday distress has somehow been repackaged as a mental illness.

EXPERIENCES rarely meet expectations in a world where most of us feel sadness, fury and anxiety on a regular basis, sometimes all at once. Many of us do this without the expectation of counselling or a course of therapy to make us feel better about ourselves — but some of us don’t.

and if adults cannot grasp the difference between normal feelings and pathological ones, what chance do small schoolchildren have?

I also worry that the blazing spotlight now focused on mental health might be to the detriment of those who really do suffer serious psychological problems far worse than anxiety.

For the ones who most need help are sometimes those who can’t speak up at all. amid all the clamour, we must not forget that.