Recession Depression
We all know that stress can have a profoundly negative effect on our mental health. A recent study by Roehampton University and the children’s charity Elizabeth Finn Care has revealed a sharp increase in the number of people suffering from mental health problems related to stress due to redundancies, job insecurity and pay cuts etc. These include symptoms such as anxiety and depression.
According to the report, the rise of people experiencing stress related mental health symptoms is related to concerns about the economic downturn. It’s reported that there has been up to a five-fold increase in the incidents of mental health problems with up to 71% of people who have lost their jobs in the last year experiencing symptoms of depression, 55% suffering from stress and 52% experiencing symptoms of anxiety. It was also found that those in the middle socio-economic group were more likely to experience depression and that people aged between 18 and 30 were the age group most likely to be affected by the symptoms of stress related depression, anxiety and other mental health problems.
“What makes our findings worrying is the high percentage of people reporting symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress. This applies even more to those who have lost their job or experienced a major loss of income.” said Dr Joerg Huber, principal lecturer at Roehampton University. He added that “Left untreated, depression could turn into “a vicious cycle of related disability and an inability to work”.
Stress has also been shown to have an negative effect on our physical health and recent research suggests that in particular, long-term or chronic stress can lower the immune system, restrict healing and effect the functioning of the brain. This in turn has a negative impact on our mental health, increasing stress levels and further increasing the chances and severity of depression and anxiety and, with the government planning cuts to public jobs and services of up to 40%, the recession doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon. Rather, there are going to be many more job losses, redundancies, pay freezes and pay cuts to come over the next few years.
Complementary therapists have known for thousands of years how relaxing treatments such as hypnotherapy and guided imagery, as well as touch therapies like massage including, Swedish massage, Indian head massage, reflexology and reiki, can boost the immune system, increase self esteem and self confidence, increase energy levels and improve brain function. It now seams that at long last the medical community is catching on to what we’ve been doing right all these many years and some doctors are finally beginning to refer patients to complementary therapists (if yours isn’t then start hassling them!!).
Leading scientists such as Dr Bruce Lipton and Dr Candace Pert have shown that stress is the cause of almost all disease and that by reducing stress the balance of hormones in the body changes in favour of those needed for healthy cell growth, efficient digestion and uptake of nutrients and a stronger immune system.
It’s well known that reducing stress and increasing relaxation allows the immune system to work more effectively, damaged tissue is repaired faster and recovery from injury and illness is quicker. This means that patients using complementary therapy often require fewer and lower doses of harmful drugs and they generally spend less time in hospital. Due to the government’s demand for 20% cuts from so called “efficiency” measures within the NHS, I believed that complementary therapy will need to play a major role (alongside conventional medicine) in helping to reduce costs within the NHS while maintaining the highest levels of care.
