The Thorny Question of … Anxiety

 

 The First Stage of My Transformation UK Project

That Which We Call a Rose

By Any Other Name

Would Smell as Sweet

              (Shakespeare)

 I don’t know about you, but I grew up in worrying times … but … nothing lasts. Worry became Stress, and, in its latest incarnation, it became...  ANXIETY.

Where I came from, anxiety was seen as a sort of lower level of worry. You know, anxious that you might prick your finger on those rose thorns. Still, as the Bard said, what’s in a name? As long as we all understand what we are talking about. It’s interesting what they have done with worry Anxiety, and I thought you might like a quick tour.

Many of you, I know, have suffered from anxiety, or care for someone suffering with it, so please cut me a little slack here until we get the others up to speed.

Anxiety has been promoted to the ranks of Mental Health, so we had better become more serious about how we view it. Having said that, as you may expect, there are various ways of viewing Anxiety. Researchers call these views operational concepts, - back to renaming that rose again 😊

 

The first concept, or view, is MEDICAL.

The starting point is invariably the GP, who will question you, examine you and, in our case, diagnose you with anxiety.  In other words, you have a condition that can be treated with medication. If you can’t sleep, they will give you sleeping pills, and you will probably get a tranquilise to calm you down. GPs tend to see anxiety as a medical condition they can treat, just like any other chronic illness. Even if your GP sends you to see a psychiatrist, the same medical approach will invariably be followed as they are also medical practitioners.

The second concept is Cognitive and treated by CBT.

I was going to write Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, but I thought that would scare you off, so we will take a cutting from the rose and just call it CBT. This is what my old mum called, ‘a trouble shared is a trouble halved’. Here, psychology really becomes involved. It begins with the ‘patient’, let’s call her Mary, describing what form the anxiety is taking.  Let’s say, ‘a fear of socialising’. This is a very real fear, the consequences affect her work and stops her forming relationships. The therapist, over a course of meetings with Mary, builds a picture of the events that have activated the anxiety. Mary has an elder sister, Elle, who is an academic high achiever. Mary has grown up in her sister’s shadow, throughout her life. There’s a lot more, but let’s give Mary some privacy.

Having established what’s activated the anxiety and the consequences of it, her beliefs are now discussed. Perhaps she believes she is valueless, or it’s in her genes, or she feels repulsive. The psychologist now needs to adjust Mary’s beliefs and/or suggest coping strategies. This could take the form of one-on-one meetings, group meetings, or similar solutions. Let’s hope poor Mary soon starts to lead a full and happy life.   

In both the concepts we’ve mentioned, medical and CBT, the common feature is that the problem(s) is viewed as lying within the person suffering anxiety, and they can be treated. However, there is a third concept. The SOCIAL, which I know you will like because you will think, “That’s exactly what I always say.”  

I recently watched a video in which a scientist (I was going to say a social epidemiologist, but I didn’t), Richard Wilkinson, gave a very clear lecture on his concept of the main contributor to anxiety as being economic inequality. You know the sort of stuff, the media is full of it, the big bosses getting bonuses and the poor old nurses getting little. Well Wilkinson has graphs to show how ‘the developed’ countries perform against each other, from ‘life expectancy’ to ‘standards of living’. Without exception, he explains, the country with low inequality comes out on top.

Yet it isn’t just how much we earn that causes anxiety. Other researchers bring culture into the discussion. They argue that in countries with cultures such as UK and USA, people see themselves as independent individuals who compete to better their social status. In all competitions there are winners and losers, and this status inequality adds to increased mental health issues.

On the other hand, Japan has a different culture more interdependent, community based, resulting in status being seen as less important. Hence, better outcomes in mental health and wellbeing.

There’s one more part to the social concept and that is materialism. You all understand the teenage drive to stay at the forefront of the latest hi-tech product: the status-rush from being first, and depression on only being able to afford last year’s tech. This is just the start of the materialistic drive that spreads through all aspects of life.

 So, there we have ANXIETY, which many see as the problems of individuals that can be treated by medicine or therapy. Others argue that you can’t cure society by treating it one person at a time: societal issues needed to be treated as a whole.

Use the Comment Box to suggest your remedies.

You will probably be wondering why I have put you through an ANXIETY post on my Transformation UK blog ... read on to make the connection.

For all the expertise and research that has gone on over the last 50 years, in the Social causes of anxiety and the need to cure it ...  beyond a cry to increase taxes, and a vague reference to Victorian sewage and typhoid, nobody explains HOW?

To me, living in the UK, I can only see that ‘they’ have arrived at the point William Beveridge arrived at in 1942. In his autobiography, Beveridge said he found himself halfway to Moscow when he developed the Social Democratic Welfare State. The population has nearly doubled since then. A new Beveridge Plan ‘writ large’, together with the levelling of status that the ‘invisible hand’ of the market is currently bringing in 2022, moves us to the left a little. Away from individualism, materialism, and a slight shuffle towards the ‘commune’, but not as far as Eastern Bloc failure ... or Moscow.

I transf n the next post we will have a look at the Beveridge Plan that transformed the UK