- Experts say we are living through a historically stressful time, with chronic stress from unrelenting issues.
- They recommend people focus on taking care of themselves first by eating a balanced diet, spending time outdoors, and talking with others who have similar concerns.
- Experts hope the current stressful time will encourage people to take mental health more seriously.
COVID-19 and climate change and elections.
Add to that Afghanistan, masks, wildfires, and hurricanes, and you’ve got more than a few reasons to recoil as you travel through your daily life.
If it feels like it’s too much to handle, there are numbers that back up that current collective stress level.
According to Jillian Hughes, a spokesperson for Mental Health America, more clicks than ever have been coming into online stress indicator surveys.
“The number of people screening with moderate to severe symptoms of depression and anxiety in the first half of 2021 is similar [to] the number from 2020 and remains higher than the number of people screening at risk prior to COVID-19,” Hughes told Healthline.
In the first half of 2021, 79 percent of people who took an anxiety screening exhibited moderate to severe symptoms, and 84 percent of people who took a depression screening scored with moderate to severe symptoms.
The organization’s annual State of Mental Health in America report pulls no punches when it declared, “Your mental health is worsening.”
Source: healthline