Beating Stress, Anxiety and Depression

Some Facts

Who suffers from mood disorders and how many of us are affected?

Many people in the modern world are affected by stress anxiety and depression. In Britain, for example, 40 per cent of all disability (as indicated by the number of people in receipt of Disability Benefit) is due to mental disorders (of which stress, anxiety and depression make up the greater part) compared with only 2 per cent for cancer. Depressive illness and chronic anxiety (mood disorders) do not discriminate - they strike young and old, rich and poor and men and women of all races - but few people willingly admit to having suffered from them. Part of the reason for this is the stigma among the general public, who do not understand that such conditions are very different to psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a serious psychotic condition but it is now treated so effectively that most sufferers can live reasonably normal lives in the community. Schizophrenia appears in all cultures around the world and strikes roughly 0.5-1 per cent of most populations.

Percentage of People with Mental Illness in UK Age 16-75
  • Mood Disorders 16.5%: 1 in 6 people, 1 in 3 families affected.
  • Schizophrenia 0.5%

Contrary to the impressions given in the media, schizophrenia is not on the increase. In contrast, the incidence of mood disorders such as anxiety and depression continues to increase. As many as 1 in 6 UK citizens and 1 in 5 Americans will be affected at some time in their lives.

  'Crippling Depression and Chronic Anxiety are the biggest causes of misery in Britain today, far outweighing poverty as a cause of social deprivation'- LSE 2006


What is causing the epidemic of Anxiety and Depression?

First we need to understand stress, which is derived from the Latin word distress, which literally means 'pulled apart'. Medically, stress is defined as disturbance to our inner equilibrium, which is known as homeostasis. One way of understanding stress is to look at the human function curve.

On the upslope of the curve performance improves in proportion to arousal, and mind and body are restored by sleep and relaxation so that our inner equilibrium is maintained. Once an individual's ability to cope is exceeded, however, effort continues but it is on the downslope and performance deteriorates and levels of circulating stress hormones such as cortisol start to increase. This results in feelings of emotional and mental discomfort and restlessness, and is generally differentiated from depression by feelings of agitation. Sleep which is normally restorative deteriorates and other indications of mind-body problems increase. People may not recognise their negative emotional state or respond appropriately until they become more seriously ill. As people move further down the slope, conscious intellectual activity such as thinking, reasoning and learning is impaired and with increasing exhaustion negative emotions including despair and hopelessness take over, often with no basis in reality.

Everyone will have a different slope, and in vulnerable individuals the beginning of the downslope will begin at lower levels of stress. Moreover, for some people it will be one episode of intense stress (for example the loss of a loved one) that tips them over on to the downslope.



What is going on in our mind/body system when we are stressed?

We know from experiments on laboratory animals such as rats* that stress has clear physiological responses. For example, if rats are repeatedly thrown into icy cold water, they will initially suffer stress and agitation followed by anxiety states thought to reflect the instincts to avoid and escape the experience. They will subsequently withdraw and show many of the symptoms of depression and finally they suffer from a condition known as uncoping stress, which is equivalent to what is called in humans a nervous breakdown. To understand what is happening in the rats we first must learn a little more about the human brain and the nervous system.
*We do not condone present or future experiments on animals, but if animals have been sacrificed for research in the past we believe the data should be used effectively.



The human brain

The human brain actually comprises three brains which evolved in three key stages of our evolution from reptiles to mammals to humans. The reptilian brain, or brain stem, is concerned with our basic survival and developed first during the dinosaur era. It was followed about 100 million years later by the development of the emotional brain (often referred to as the old mammalian brain) or limbic system, which has the capacity for emotions such as happiness, disgust or fear and also has a system for storing memories. The third very recent phase of evolution resulted in the cerebrum, or cerebral cortex. Sometimes called the 'human' brain, the cerebrum is capable of logical abstract thought, the use of language and numbers, problem-solving and creativity.

Many experts studying stress, anxiety and depression now believe that they reflect problems with the autonomic system, which regulates the involuntary actions of the body such as heartbeat and breathing and which is largely controlled by the brain stem-our reptilian brain.

The autonomic nervous system includes centres in the brain stem, where neurotransmitters are secreted, and the hypothalamus, which is linked to the body's master gland, the pituitary, which controls the release of hormones.

 

The autonomic nervous system consists of the parasympathetic (rest and digest) and sympathetic (fight or flight) divisions, which try to maintain our equilibrium in response to tranquilising and stimulating forces respectively. The sympathetic nervous system is designed to cope with immediate threats like the appearance of a predator or other such frightening events. Unfortunately, this system of self defence, which meant we were well equipped to handle threats in our stone-age past, can cause serious problems with our mental health in the quite different conditions of the twenty-first century. Not only does the sympathetic nervous system switch on inappropriately, but it often stays switched on for too long.



What does this do to our mental and physical wellbeing?

When the sympathetic nervous system is switched on, hormones bring about major physiological changes in the brain and body in seconds. The hormones speed up the whole metabolic rate and have major effects such as increasing heart beat, raising blood pressure, slowing down digestion and decreasing immunity. The changes in the autonomic nervous system caused by stress have been implicated not only in mental illness but also heart disease and cancer by some scientists

In the book, Beating Stress, Anxiety and Depression we tell you how to get the best medical treatment based on accurate diagnosis, how to reduce your risk factors to help prevent and treat such mood disorders, and how to obtain the benefits of proper nutrition based on the latest scientific evidence. We also give you ten key lifestyle factors to help you to reduce your level of stress.