I’m a big believer in talking about stuff, particularly the stuff that traditionally we’ve been encouraged to keep to ourselves, like mental health concerns. Today I have an interview with Dr Mark Winwood, Director of Psychological Services, AXA PPP healthcare. (Find them on Twitter and Facebook.)

I hope you find it useful. Please do leave a comment and share your own experiences if you would like to. 

how to cope with anxiety and depression

How many people in the UK experience stress, anxiety or depression every year or at some point in their life?

Research has revealed that up to 5 million people suffer from anxiety disorders in the UK, and it was the second most prevalent mental illness reported amongst adults in 2014¹ – so we’re looking at a big problem here. It’s likely that you’ll know someone suffering from mental ill health at some point in your life. We know that one in four people experience a mental health problem in any year. Prevalence is different depending on gender – women are more likely than men (33% compared with 19%) to report ever having been diagnosed with a mental illness².

If people haven’t experienced mental ill health themselves, it can be difficult to understand, and you get a lot of ‘pull yourself together’ and ‘cheer up’ attitudes toward the illness. Is there any element of this that’s good advice? To what extent should we take responsibility for ‘pulling ourselves together’?

Taking responsibility for how you are feeling is a step in the right direction, but if you are experiencing the symptoms of anxiety or depression, don’t trivialise it – seek professional help, or begin by talking about your feelings with someone you trust. It can be very difficult to explain mental ill health to those that haven’t experienced it; and this is part of the stigma we are trying to tackle.

What’s the first thing someone should do if they are worried that they are experiencing stress, anxiety or depression?

I would recommend they talk to a medical professional. If that seems too daunting, or too big a step; take it slowly. Do some research first and talk to someone you trust about how you are feeling. From there you can slowly build up to seeking expert advice.

How helpful is medication?

Medication can be helpful for some people – in some cases, anti-depressants can help those experiencing anxiety and depression. For individuals who have panic attacks beta blockers can be prescribed to help. Talking therapies are also sometimes recommended for mental health issues and can be very successful when combined with medication.

Are mental health issues like depression and anxiety genetic in any way? Or do we learn certain behaviours if we have grown up with them?

We do not know for sure what causes someone to experience mental ill health, but it could be linked to a variety of factors including our genetics, family history, lifestyle and life events. Going through a stressful life event such as a divorce, bereavement or redundancy or having money worries can trigger mental health issues, as well as more traumatic experiences such as being in a car crash or a fire. A life event trigger may more significantly impact those with a family/genetic predisposition.

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I have an alarm clock that wakes me up to the radio every morning. A while back I switched from being woken up by Radio 4 to letting the sounds of BBC Somerset drift into by subconscious instead. Listening to Radio 4 made me feel a little bit more important, but it made me miserable because everything in the news is so fucking sad.*

Seriously, pick up any newspaper or turn the TV on at 6pm (to something other than Eggheads) and you’d be forgiven for wondering why we don’t just set a massive nuclear explosion off in the centre of the earth and put us all out of our misery.

Take a look at the news today and you can see what I mean:

negative news

It’s shit. I mean well done to Brian Blessed and everything, but come on. View Post

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On Boxing Day I went out to the retail park a mile or so down the road from me to exchange some Christmas presents at Next. It made me quite sad, and not just because it was raining so heavily that my fur coat ended up looking like a cat that had fallen into a bath. (That bit was my fault for not dressing more sensibly).

Retail parks are just so soulless, so lacking in any sort of character or hope or joy. The name gets your hopes up falsely too. Retail park. You go there feeling positive, and then there’s not even any swings or slides or things to climb on, (other than parked cars), and no rolling green hills or nature trails. It’s all just a big trick.

It was about 3.30pm by the time we went to Next, and inside the shop was just as depressing, with half empty rails of unwanted clothes and stickers on the floor showing people where to stand to wait for hours to hand over their cash. At least by late afternoon it was quiet – in the morning the store had been operating a ‘one in one out’ system, so desperate were people to get out of the house and scramble about between the racks of odd-shaped jeans, available only in sizes 6 or 20.

Retail parks make me imagine conversations like this:

Mummy: So darling, what do you want to do when you grow up?

Small girl with pigtails: Well Mummy, I want to work the majority of my working hours in a job that I find tedious at best, and then in my free time I’m going to go to a vast expanse of concrete on the outskirts of town and give all the money I earn to large corporations who already have more than they need, in return for some disposable crap I don’t want.

Mummy (fixed smile and empty eyes): Well that sounds lovely sweetheart.

Small girl with pigtails (small silent tear running down cheek): I’m going to be just like you Mummy.

Now I could well be reading too much into this – I do have a tendency to overdramatise – but I can’t help it. Surrounded by blank faced parents, staring at the piles of cheap TVs, wondering which to buy to sit their bored looking children in front of, I can’t help but want to throw myself onto the nearest cut-price blender.

Am I over reacting? How do retail parks make you feel?

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When you think of internet addicts – what do you think? Probably teenagers on msn for hours on end, talking in words that don’t make sense. Or maybe men in their twenties and thirties, absorbed in the world of online warfare, with wives and children who know the backs of their head more intimately than their faces?

Last week, parents of a three month old baby in South Korea were arrested, after letting their daughter starve to death while they were online raising a virtual child in the role-playing game Prius Online. They didn’t even play at home – they spent hours at a time in internet cafes, only returning home occasionally to give the baby the odd bottle of milk. No wonder The Times were asking yesterday if there is such a thing as internet addiction.

This is an extreme case of course, but I do wonder if there aren’t actually thousands, if not millions, of internet users who although not addicted, find cyberspace overtaking their lives in a way that can often feel difficult to manage. With so much knowledge to explore, so many ways to connect with people, the internet can feel overwhelming. And once you start getting involved in online communities, you can feel a pressure, if only internally, to carry on. It’s a bit like buying regular lottery numbers – you can’t risk not playing once you have your ‘lucky numbers’. Once you establish yourself in a forum or social network it can be hard to leave, for fear of what ‘exciting’ news or discussion might be happening without you knowing about it.

Of course I’m not saying I neglect my children in preference of raising online babies, but I do feel a pressure to somehow be involved, to be available, and if I am not online regularly I often feel guilty, or wonder if I am in someway missing out. Perhaps it is because my work revolves heavily around email, or maybe it is my flighty nature, always wondering if something more exciting might be happening somewhere else or if that next email might be a new offer of work or interesting party invitation. (Disappointingly they never are party invitations, so if you have any kind of celebration coming up, please do bear me in mind.)

As parents, we are very aware of making sure our children use the internet safely, but do we always take the same care of ourselves? With more studies showing a link between excessive internet use and depression, we are right to be concerned, but that concern needs to include the whole family. We mustn’t fall into the classic parent trap – the one where you spend twenty minutes packing wholesome lunchboxes, leaving yourself only time to scoff a piece of bread in the car for your breakfast.

I do always switch my Blackberry off at night, so as not to be kept half awake with dreams of that teasing, flashing red light, but I’m not sure this alone counts as Healthy Internet Use.

I’d be really interested to know how other people feel about their use of the internet. Are you forever flicking between forums, or do you avoid social networking sites as much as possible? Maybe you set yourself a time limit? Let me know…

Photo credit: andyi

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