The S.A.D. syndrome is about how the Stress of everyday life can escalate into Anxiety and eventually lead to Depression, the epidemic of the 21st century.
S.A.D. starts with stress, the ‘big news’ of the eighties that many seem to take for granted now.
The emphasis now is on depression (which is not a bad thing) but what we tend to see is a society in denial of where depression starts – with stress.
Why? Because it’s O.K. to have depression – that’s a disease. Stress is just “the way it is”.
According to the United Nations, stress-related anxiety and depression is the second highest cause of disease and death after heart disease.
In fact, according to a recent survey* – 46% of Australians believe stress was caused by “poor coping skills”, and yet most of us won’t admit we can’t cope or that we’re stressed these days, especially at work.
Full time jobs are getting harder and harder to find, we’re suffering from being time poor as well as financial poverty as we rush and struggle to get through the day.
In the Western world, stress is relentless, unless we sit in a corner all day (which in itself can be stressful). Not enough stress can be just as damaging as too much.
For most of us, we are exposed to a constant barrage of stressors from the moment our alarm clock goes off in the morning until we set it at night.
Then we try to get some sleep, ready for the next day’s onslaught.
It’s about time we admitted that the epidemic of depression prophesied by the World Health Organisation starts with STRESS.
And it’s about time we did something about it.
If 46% of Australians believe we don’t have the coping skills to manage stress then that seems a pretty good place to start.
We plan to give you many ways to cope with the stresses and strains of 21st century living.
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