Mixed anxiety depressive disorder

In this journal, I’d like to talk to talk about mixed anxiety depressive disorder (MADD), one of the most common mental health problems in England. It’s a condition where a person experiences the symptoms of depression and anxiety. It’s described as a diagnosable illness when a person continually worry and feeling low in mood and is hard to enjoy life. It’s quite common to have this situation because of the stress of living in London, a highly competitive city of Europe. The pressure at work and living make people feels it’s hard to face daily challenges and hard to relief during the rest time or annual leave. People will gradually lost their interest in their interested activities and probably feel they’re hard to fall into sleep easily. If the situation continues, they may also tiredness all the time and feel other negative body symptoms such as muscle tension and quick heart rate. In fact, it’s very common in primary care system and it leads to numerous impact to the whole society. According to NHS England, it is estimated this health issue affecting approximately 16% of the population of England, and it leads to a decrease of England’s national income by around 4%, which is about £80 billion. This reduction is due to high turnover rate, temporary work and reduced productivity. Although the National Health Service and therapeutic organization are aware of the impact, not all of the public understand the impact of MADD and some patients were stigmatised since somatic disorders is easier to be accepted than psychiatric disorders. I think it’s essential that work should be done to educate the public regarding the details of MADD, how to deal with stress and anxiety in daily life and how to help friends and family members. I think that early interference will prevent an exacerbation to a more serious condition. 

In the next paragraph, I’d like to discuss how counselling can promote a positive mental health. For people that are living with high pressure, it’s hard for them to find a way out because they’ve already spent most of their time and effort to deal with the existing situation and thus they don’t have capacity to process their emotions and struggles, and those stress can’t be reduced in a proper way. I think counselling can contribute by assisting people to understand their situation and relief their stress via the talking therapy process. People can then find out possible ways to deal with their own situation with the assistance of the counsellor and start to plan their future. Counsellors are not acting as a person to teach clients what’s the best way. Instead, they’re guiding the people to understand their personality, what’s in their mind and how it can be achieved. In some cases, the situation may take a long period of time to improve. If people can find a way to deal with the stress in a proper way, then they can gradually realise their potential, find their own work-life balance and their own understanding of meaning of life.