Mental Health Awareness Week

The 13 to 19 May is Mental Health Awareness Week - highlighting the impact of mental health on wellbeing. 

It is wonderful to see these really important issues being raised on the BBC News channel and the radio, especially with so many people suffering from depression and anxiety related disorders.  I expect most people know of someone amongst friends and family that have suffered from either depression or anxiety, or even both at some time in their life.

It highlights on the Mental Health Foundation website that isolation and loneliness can cause as big a health risk as smoking – which is quite startling.  With our ever growing aging population, it is a concern that increasing numbers of the elder generation will be impacted by depression and anxiety related issues at some point in their lives.  Many of us have older family members and have experience of how so often they can become more anxious, more sensitive to daily happenings that we take for granted and how they become less able to cope with issues and decisions that they found easy to adapt to when they were much younger. 

There are many anxiety related problems, a familiar one being agoraphobia.  A person can feel as if they are trapped in their own home, because they are terrified of going out and being in a variety of situations such as  wide open spaces, crowds of people and even of bumping into people they know, feeling they must stop for a chat, but very frightened as it feels like a situation with no escape. Imagine this applied to you. It can totally take over your life, spoil your social life and all the things you wanted to do in retirement, and can feel like it will last forever.

The treatment of agoraphobia is very possible.  Using both cognitive behaviour therapy via self-help resources such as books, and specialist support from professional therapists can help overcome this very common phobia.

You can begin to understand what’s happening when you have a panic attack, and how the fear of going anywhere where you might experience this can be enough to make you want to stay well away from such places. But the more you stay away, the less opportunity you have to learn that perhaps you can cope with panic and manage it, and it need not rule your life. It is important to realise that help is available, and the problem for most people can be overcome.

I was quite surprised to hear Rebecca Adlington admit live on the BBC One Show that she did not like swimming in the sea.  What a revelation for a fantastic award winning Olympic swimmer.  This just goes to show that practically everyone, even celebrities, can have a fear of something.