The Anxiety Epidemic: The Causes of our Modern-Day Anxieties

Description

Highly commended at the British Medical Association Book Awards 2019 Are we living in an age of unprecedented anxiety, or has this always been a problem throughout history? We only need look around us to see anxieties: in the family home, the workplace, on social media, and especially in the news. It's true that everyone feels anxious at some time in their lives, but we're told we're all feeling more anxious than we've ever been before - and for longer than we've ever done before. It's even reported that anxiety is a modern epidemic significant enough to challenge the dominance of depression as the most common mental health problem. Much of this increase has been attributed to changes in lifestyles that have led to more stress and pressure being placed on people: from childhood, to adolescence, to adulthood. But that's a big claim. Going back over the generations, how anxious were people in 1968 or 1818? Are people just anxious all the time - regardless of what they do or when they lived? Is anxiety an inevitable consequence of simply being alive? Graham Davey addresses many important questions about the role of anxiety. What is it good for? What are the unique modern-day causes of our anxieties and stresses? What turns normal everyday anxiety into the disabling disorders that many of us experience - distressing and debilitating conditions such as phobias, social anxiety, panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, pathological worrying and post-traumatic stress disorder? To truly conquer anxiety, we need to understand why it has established its prominent place in our modern world.

Graham Davey is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Sussex. His research interests extend across mental health problems generally, and anxiety and worry specifically. He is a former president of the British Psychological Society and is currently editor-in-chief of the Journal of Experimental Psychopathology which publishes cutting-edge research on anxiety and anxiety-related problems.

Drawing on personal and extensive academic experience as leading anxiety researcher Professor Davey addresses one of the major but neglected sources of suffering in our time. Everyone should pay attention to his engaging, informative and at times controversial discourse on anxiety. This book is a must read for all those interested in one of the most fundamental but disruptive human emotions -- Adrian Wells, Ph.D, Professor of Clinical and Experimental Psychopathology, University of Manchester Graham Davey, one of the foremost experts on anxiety in the world, alerts us that 'if you're alive you'll experience anxiety'. But is it good or bad for you? Where does it come from? Is it worse now than it used to be in prior ages? And what is there to do about it? Answers to these and many other questions are forthcoming in this highly readable, entertaining book. Everyone wrestling with anxiety in their lives will benefit from the up to date information provided -- Dr. David H. Barlow PhD, ABPP, Professor of Psychology and Pyschiatry Emeritus at Boston University