Notes on a Nervous Planet. Matt Haig

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СКАЧАТЬ RISE’ IN SELF-HARM AMONG TEENAGERS (BBC)

      WORKPLACE STRESS AFFECTS 73 PER CENT OF EMPLOYEES (The Australian)

      STARK RISE IN EATING DISORDERS BLAMED ON OVEREXPOSURE TO CELEBRITIES’ BODIES (The Guardian)

      SUICIDE ON CAMPUS AND THE PRESSURE OF PERFECTION (The New York Times)

      WORKPLACE STRESS RISING SHARPLY (Radio New Zealand)

      WILL ROBOTS TAKE OUR CHILDREN’S JOBS? (The New York Times)

      STRESS, HOSTILITY RISING IN AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOLS IN TRUMP ERA (The Washington Post)

      CHILDREN IN HONG KONG ARE RAISED TO EXCEL, NOT TO BE HAPPY (South China Morning Post)

      HIGH ANXIETY: MORE AND MORE PEOPLE ARE TODAY TURNING TO DRUGS TO DEAL WITH STRESS (El País)

      ARMY OF THERAPISTS TO BE SENT INTO SCHOOLS TO TACKLE ANXIETY EPIDEMIC (The Telegraph)

      IS THE INTERNET GIVING US ALL ADHD? (The Washington Post)

      ‘OUR MINDS CAN BE HIJACKED’: THE TECH INSIDERS WHO FEAR A SMARTPHONE DYSTOPIA (The Guardian)

      TEENAGERS ARE GROWING MORE ANXIOUS AND DEPRESSED (The Economist)

      INSTAGRAM WORST SOCIAL MEDIA APP FOR YOUNG PEOPLE’S MENTAL HEALTH (CNN)

      WHY ARE RATES OF SUICIDE SOARING ACROSS THE PLANET? (Alternet)

      As I said, it is ironic that reading the news about how things are making us anxious and depressed actually can make us anxious, and that tells us as much as the headlines themselves.

      The aim in this book isn’t to say that everything is a disaster and we’re all screwed, because we already have Twitter for that. No. The aim isn’t even to say that the modern world has uniformly worse problems than before. In some specific ways it is getting measurably better. In figures from the World Bank, the number of people worldwide living in severe economic hardship is falling radically, with over one billion people moving out of extreme poverty in the last thirty years. And think of all the millions of children’s lives around the globe saved by vaccinations. As Nicholas Kristof pointed out in a 2017 New York Times article, ‘if just about the worst thing that can happen is for a parent to lose a child, that’s about half as likely as it was in 1990.’ So for all the ongoing violence and intolerance and economic injustice prevalent in our species, there are – on the most global of scales – also reasons for pride and hope.

      The problem is that each age poses a unique and complex set of challenges. And while many things have improved, not all things have. Inequalities still remain. And some new problems have arisen. People often live in fear, or feel inadequate, or even suicidal, when they have – materially – more than ever.

      And I am keenly aware that the oft-used approach of pointing out a list of advantages of modern life, such as health and education and average income, does not help. It is like a wagging finger telling a depressed person to count her blessings because no one has died. This book seeks to recognise that what we feel is just as important as what we have. That mental wellbeing counts as much as physical wellbeing – indeed, that it is part of physical wellbeing. And that, on these terms, something is going wrong.

      If the modern world is making us feel bad, then it doesn’t matter what else we have going for us, because feeling bad sucks. And feeling bad when we are told there is no reason to, well, that sucks even more.

      I want this book to put these stressed-out headlines in context, and to look at how to protect ourselves in a world of potential panic. Because, whatever else we have going for ourselves, our minds are still vulnerable. Many mental health problems are quantifiably rising, and – if we believe our mental wellbeing is important – we need, quite desperately, to look at what might be behind these changes.

      Mental health problems are not:

      A bandwagon.

      Fashionable.

      A fad.

      A celebrity trend.

      A result of a growing awareness of mental health problems.

      Always easy to talk about.

      The same as they always were.

      Yin to the yang

      SO, IT IS a tale of two realities.

      Many of us, it is true, have a lot to be grateful for in the developed world. The rise in life expectancy, the decline in infant mortality, the availability of food and shelter, the absence of major all-encompassing world wars. We have addressed many of our basic physical needs. So many of us live in relative day-to-day safety, with roofs over our heads and food on the table. But after solving some problems, are we left with others? Have some social advances brought new problems? Of course.

      It sometimes feels as if we have temporarily solved the problem of scarcity and replaced it with the problem of excess.

      Everywhere we look, people are seeking ways to change their lifestyles, by taking things away. Diets are the obvious example of this passion for restriction, but think also of the trend for dedicating whole months in the calendar to veganism or sobriety, and the growing desire for ‘digital detoxes’. The growth in mindfulness, meditation and minimal living is a visible response to an overloaded culture. A yin to the frantic yang of 21st-century life.

      Breakdown

      AS I LEFT my most recent bout of anxiety behind me, I began to waver.

      Maybe this was all a stupid idea.

      I began to wonder if it was a bad thing to dwell on problems. But then I remembered that it is precisely not talking about problems that is itself a problem. It’s what causes people to break down in their office or classroom. It’s what fills up addiction units and hospitals and raises suicide figures. And in the end I decided that, for me, knowing this stuff is essential. I want to find reasons to be positive, and ways to be happy, but first you need to know the reality of the situation.

      For instance, personally I need to know why I have a fear of slowing down, like I am the bus in Speed that would explode if it dropped below 50 miles per hour. I want to work out if the speed of me relates to the speed of the world.

      The reason is simple, and partly selfish. I am petrified of where my mind can go, because I know where it has already been. And I also know that part of the reason I became ill in my twenties was to do with the way I was living. Hard drinking, bad sleeping, aspiring to be something I wasn’t, and the pressures of society at large. I never want to fall back into that place, and so I need to be alert not only to where stress can take people, but also where it comes from. I want to know if one of the reasons I sometimes feel like I am on the brink of a breakdown is partly because the world sometimes seems on the brink of a breakdown.

      Breakdown is an unspecific word, which might explain why medical professionals shy away from it these days, but at its root we understand what it conveys. The dictionary defines it as ‘1. A mechanical failure’ and ‘2. A failure of a relationship or system’.

      And it doesn’t take too much looking to see the warning signs of a breakdown not just inside our selves, СКАЧАТЬ