Anxiety may cause to you to question whether you and your symptoms are normal. I would like to share some compelling statistics to consider. There is a growing recognition in our society of the effects of stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms. Based on the National Institute of Mental Health website, https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/any-anxiety-disorder, about 31% of adults report experiencing some anxiety disorder symptoms at some point in their lives. The statistics expound further to distinguish the degree of impairment.
The NIMH report states, “Among adults with anxiety disorders, an estimated 22.8% had serious impairment, 33% had moderate impairment, and 43% had mild impairment.”Women are about 9% more likely to suffer from an anxiety disorder than men.
The KFF (formerly Kaiser Family Foundation) is an independent source for polling and policy
research with a mission to offer information to support healthy policy making. Recently, the KFF analyzed the latest federal data provided by the Census Bureau from a 2023 survey of households. The survey found that 50% of adults between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four reported some type of anxiety or depressive symptoms. This vulnerable young adult population had about a 20% higher rate of reported symptoms than other adult age groups (https://www.kff.org/mental-health/press-release/
latest-federal-data-show-that-young-people-are-more-likely-than-older-adults-to-be-experiencing-symptoms-
of-anxiety-or-depression/).
I often think about the stressful events these young adults have grown up with, such as the realities of terrorist attacks, school shootings, and the pandemic, to name a few. Couple these stressors with the acceleration of technical advances, a “not-enough” societal attitude, instant access to news of tragedies locally and globally, an acrimonious political culture, climate disasters, war, and the realities of unstable economies—talk about a recipe for anxiety. Life is stressful. It always has been, and it always will be. Arguably, life seemed much easier when there were clear and present threats that passed. In today’s global information systems and economy, threats seem to continually roll in with little reprieve. Considering all of these challenges, anxiety seems like a normal reaction.
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