ANGELA BURNS

COLUMNIST

LAST week was Mental Health Awareness week and the focus this year was exploring the impact of stress on our daily lives.

Stress in itself is not a mental health condition. In fact, sometimes it is not an entirely bad thing.

Without our ability to feel stress we may not be where we are today.

That physical response within all of us that alerts us to danger – triggering our “fight or flight” response – has helped humans survive dangerous situations since the dawn of evolution.

We can all relate to a time when we have felt stressed – perhaps feeling under pressure at work, or when a loved one was ill, or worrying about our finances.

It’s not easy to pin down what made us feel stressed, but I’m sure it’s a feeling all of us can recall – that feeling of abnormal pressure, where you can’t quite control what is going on around you.

Many of us accept that stress can be a part of our daily lives. We can often bounce back quite easily from a stressful encounter without any lasting negative impacts on our health.

But what happens when we are exposed to long-term stress? Are we fully aware of just how much this affects us?

Long-term exposure to stress can affect our sleep patterns and mood, but if left unmanaged is known to be linked to higher blood pressure, can disrupt our immune system and can increase our likelihood of developing chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease.

But it takes its toll on our mental health too, opening the door to conditions such as anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts and self-harm.

The Mental Health Foundation’s recent survey on the prevalence of stress among the UK population demonstrated this delicate link between long-term exposure to stress and poor mental health.

One of the largest surveys of its kind, its findings were staggering.

Having asked more than 4,600 UK adults, it found that three out of four have felt overwhelmed or unable to cope with stress at some point in the last year.

They found that 51% of those who had felt stressed reported feeling depressed and 61% had felt anxious, 16% had self-harmed and 32% had experienced suicidal thoughts and feelings.

The impact stress has on us as a society should not be understated.

The UK Conservative government are leading the way in addressing this, having recently undertaken an independent review into how employers can better support the mental health of their employees.

This will go some way to tackle work related stress, but we must start sooner.

For our younger generations, Welsh education must focus on developing emotionally resilient and robust children who will be better able to handle the stresses and demands of the future.

By tackling stress, we can go a long way to tackle mental health problems such as anxiety and depression, and, in some instances, self-harm and suicide.

But by doing so, we can become more supportive of one another, build our emotional resilience and show a long term commitment to reducing its prevalence.