Are 20% of women anxious ‘most of the time?’

In a survey published at the beginning of May by the Mental Health Foundation charity, 22% of women are preoccupied with ‘everyday worries’.

We all have worries or concerns about everyday things, the things we take for granted a lot of the time – money, our relationships, our children and our jobs – but the element of the report that came as a surprise was that just five years ago in 2009, the number of women who claimed to be anxious or preoccupied with similar worries was only 9%.

What has happened in the preceding five years to have precipitated such a dramatic increase?

The report, entitled ‘Living with Anxiety’ points to an increase in sufferers of anxiety in both sexes and the headline facts are as follows –

  • Money, finance and debt are the top concerns amongst the women polled (2,300)
  • Just over half of the women said they get more frightened or anxious then they used to
  • 29% say they are embarrassed to admit feeling anxious
  • Only 7% of women went to a GP despite around 30% saying they ‘would go’
  • 8,720 patients were treated in hospital for anxiety in 2013, including 2,440 women over the age of 60

It’s Mental Health Week and the charity is launching a major awareness campaign to increase the public perception of anxiety and its potential effect on people’s mental and emotional states.

To understand anxiety, please go to the What is Stress & Anxiety page of the website and to find out how Behavioural Freedom can free you from the unwanted behaviours that prohibit you from living the life you want to live, please click here.

It might seem obvious, but the report also said that 57% of those polled wish they were less anxious (up from 17% in 2009) and Jenny Edwards from the charity described the findings as ‘stark’.

The report also mentions the contributing factors to the increase in the numbers of stressed and anxious women. More and more women are in charge of the family finances and they are the ones who make a concerted effort to balance the books during hard times, especially in the last few years when redundancies and ‘cost-cutting’ have been the order of the day.

In addition, women also assume the role of carer which can add to the list of daily concerns – kids at school, homework, making dinner and packed lunches, making time for her partner – and so the list goes on.

Do you feel stressed or anxious? Are those feelings consuming your life to the detriment of everything else? Do you feel like a weight needs to be lifted off your shoulders?

Please call me on 01727 236136 or email me using the using the form on the Contact page and I will equip you with the tools you need to positively and permanently change your behaviour using evidence-based Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy (CBH).