Are people's lives really more stressful than they were 30 years ago?

Telegraph

2 days ago

It may be, as recently reported in this paper, that many feel the current (alleged) mental health crisis to be 'overblown', but there must be something seriously amiss when, as the latest figures reveal, 8.6 million adults in England now take antidepressants.
Almost more extraordinary still, this is twice as many as a decade ago and eight times more than back in the 1990s. Certainly much has changed over the past 30 years, not necessarily for the better, but people's lives can scarcely have become so much more stressful as to trigger an epidemic of gloom and despondency.
This leaves two possible explanations for that eightfold rise in numbers. Either doctors have become much more diligent in seeking out and treating those suffering from depression, who were previously overlooked. Or more probably, this is yet a further instance of the phenomenon of medicalisation – in this case attaching a psychiatric label to the emotional state of unhappiness which is indeed common enough.
The most commonly prescribed class of antidepressants, the SSRIs (such as Prozac) are, as many will know, psycho-stimulants boosting the levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain. While they are certainly effective in improving the mood of the truly depressed and the legions of the unhappy alike, they will also inevitably be exposed to the hazards of their potential adverse effects, highlighted by the current, acrimonious controversy over their prevalence and severity.
Put (very) simply, serotonin serves multifarious functions besides its role in influencing mood. In the brain it is involved in memory, pain perception and sexual pleasure, as well as propagating the nerve impulses controlling the rate and contractility of the heart muscle and the motility of the gut.
Prolonged stimulation of those serotonin receptors with SSRIs necessarily alters their sensitivity, predisposing, when the time comes to discontinue them, to a withdrawal syndrome referred to by the mnemonic FINISH – flu-like symptoms, insomnia, nausea, imbalance, sensory disturbance and hyper-arousal. Or as one woman described it more bluntly, 'physical and emotional turmoil, dizziness, exhaustion, electric shock sensations and suicidal thoughts'.
Organisations such as the Royal College of Psychiatrists maintained this withdrawal syndrome to be 'usually mild, resolving within a couple of weeks'. This complacency was challenged successfully back in 2019 when it emerged that, on the contrary, more than half deemed their symptoms 'severe' persisting in some for three months or more.
Not so, according to researchers at King's College London last month who maintained their interpretation of the relevant evidence suggest the symptoms 'cannot be judged as significant' – a claim that critics argue 'could cause considerable harm'. And so the dispute rumbles on though the current state of uncertainty only emphasises the folly of that upward spiral in prescribing these potent drugs so insouciantly to so many.
The best remedy for nosebleeds
The nuisance of a nosebleed is usually readily terminated by pinching the nose between finger and thumb for 15 minutes. Simpler still, for those in whom they are recurrent is a swimmer's nose clip that can be kept in place for as long as is necessary 'does not cause the finger aching associated with manual compression and is equally effective in children and adults,' suggests Phillip Turner, a casualty doctor.
Better certainly than the traditional 'home remedy' of dangling a set of cold keys down the back of the neck – though a correspondent to The New Scientist some time ago suggested this might terminate the bleeding by inducing a reflex constriction of the blood vessels of the nasal lining.
Improbable, one might think but subsequently confirmed by researchers at the University of Dresden. Investigating the effect of applying an ice pack to the back of the neck they found, sure enough, this resulted in a marked diminution in blood flow through the nasal blood vessels most susceptible to spontaneous bleeding.