This article by Martha Gill has been published in The Guardian. It begins:
“The psychiatrist Simon Wessely once said his spirits sank every time there was a mental health awareness week. ‘We don’t need people to be more aware. We can’t deal with the ones who already are aware,’ he said.
Yet awareness spreads and propagates, even as queues outside psychiatrist offices trail around the block. This year’s big week, run by the Mental Health Foundation, starts on Monday. Its theme is anxiety, a disorder affecting a quarter of adults, according to the foundation – a statistic that sounds unbelievably large until you read its description of the condition, which seems almost broad enough to take in the full sweep of human experience.
‘Lots of things can lead to feelings of anxiety, including exam pressures, relationships, starting a new job (or losing one) or other big life events. We can also get anxious when it comes to things to do with money and not being able to meet our basic needs, like heating our home or buying food.’
Britain is certainly more aware than it used to be. Diagnoses have broadened – more of us see grief and stress as mental illnesses than we did a decade ago. Therapy-speak infuses the language: triggering, boundaries, projection, self-care – stiff-upper-lipped Brits have expanded their vocabularies …”
You can read more from here.
