Mental Health Awareness Week 2018 runs all this week (14th-20th May). Hosted by the Mental Health Foundation, the focus this year is on stress.
As part of their campaign, the MFA have published a report about our levels of stress in the UK, titled ‘Stress: are we coping?’. The key findings from this report are:
- 74% of people have at some point felt so stressed that they felt overwhelmed or unable to cope
- Over half of adults (51%) who felt stressed reported feeling depressed
- 61% reported feeling anxious
- Of the adults who said they had felt stress at some point in their lives, 16% said they had self-harmed
- 32% said they had suicidal thoughts and feelings
- Young adults are the age group most vulnerable to stress. Overall, 83% of 18 to 24-year-olds said they had been left overwhelmed or unable to cope
- Young women are more at risk of stress than men
- 36% of women who felt high levels of stress, related this to their comfort with their appearance and body image,compared to 23% of men
- Housing worries (paying rent, affording to buy a house) are key stressors for more than 1 in 3 adults,
aged 18-24 - 60% of Those aged 18-24 reported higher stress related to the pressure to succeed, 60%
At No5, the current most common reason for referral to counselling with us is anxiety, itself a symptom of pressures faced by young people today, and of stress itself.
To download the report and check out MHF’s recommendations to address these issues, click here.
