Failing health and the implications of stress….

We all get stressed by different things and to different degrees, and the way that we handle that stress as individuals varies greatly. What may be an absolute disaster to one person, causing them to completely break down may be something that is coped with easily by someone else. I have been told by a great many people that I deal with very high levels of stress well, but I wonder if this is actually the case, because there is an additional wrinkle to this tale in that different people exhibit stress created symptoms differently, so when I appear calm, that is not necessarily the emotion I an actually experiencing. So, from the point of view of dealing with stress, how does your typical overworked GP manage to get to the root of what is happening and how damaging an individual s finding that stress?

The simple answer is that they don’t. Doctors, unless they are highly specialized really have little or no chance of understanding what is actually going on psychologically speaking. Even if the Doctor does gain some insight, the current state of mental health care in this country is so overstretched that treatment options are severely limited being either anti-depressant drugs which tend to be of limited benefit and can cause serious side effects, or “talking” therapies which again have only a limited success rate. None of the treatment options available are aimed at curing the root cause of the stress, but can allow the sufferer a little relief, perhaps enough to begin to address the causes themselves.

This is somewhat surprising given that we have been seriously studying extreme stress for quite a while now. The research really began in earnest as a consequence of the First World War when soldiers were disabled by what was at the time called “Shell-shock” but which was almost certainly a for of what is now called post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It was found that under extreme stress the human mind begins to shut down, re-routing neural pathways to avoid whatever the cause of the stress is, leading to sufferers becoming increasingly isolated and withdrawn, prone to panic attacks and extreme anxiety, and with a depleted immune response. These symptoms are seen in all walks of life, not just the military and are highly variable in severity.

It is the opinion of the author that we are facing an epidemic in the UK as the effects of having to bail out the banks and the failing economy begin to bite deeper. We are already seeing the frustrations spilling out onto the streets, and I feel that there is more to come yet. We urgently need to try to address the causes of stress and find better ways of managing this chronic condition in the long term in a way that doesn’t rely on medication and unproven therapies. There are solutions, there are many people who deal with some very extreme stress, perhaps it is time to analyse the way in which some people manage to cope, and to try to adapt successes to a wider audience….