Bad for our health

Drugs may help with the physical symptoms of anxiety, but the root problem most often requires other forms of treatment, such as empathic counselling - or, in some cases, self-help using the principles of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, for example.

Increased anxiety levels in our society are in part a product of vastly weakened support mechanisms, which traditionally helped people to deal with high amounts of stress. Families, neighbourhoods, community clubs and religious groups have all suffered as a result of changes to the social fabric.

These and other pressures - including digitisation, which has people retreating from the physical environment - have contributed to a loss of communal identity.

With that has come a perceived loss of emotional support. Where once we may have turned to a trusted family member or close neighbour to share a problem, many of us now have to go it alone.

Until, that is, the resulting anxiety begins to manifest itself in ways that are clearly damaging to our health.

When that happens, we're often forced to rely upon arms-length care of the type offered by medicos and other professionals. We simply haven't developed relationships of sufficient depth or strength within our immediate living environment to provide us with more hands-on solace and encouragement.

Science Rules, OK?

As a culture, we tend to believe that medical science - and science in general - holds the key to overcoming almost every human affliction.

Some social commentators have long warned that we are over-reliant on the NHS and on the medical profession generally.

Medicine may be the most humane of all the sciences, but it is now linked more closely than ever to other branches of science, such as chemistry. Overworked medicos rely heavily upon products and online guidance provided by chemists and others within the pharmaceutical industry.

And science generally is treated with a respect bordering on reverence. We treat the prognostications of eminent scientists as almost being inviolable.

In the process, we fail to recognise the fact that science is as much about questions as it is about certainties, and often more so. Scientific method works at its best when someone is questioning the status quo in the pursuit of a new paradigm.

We also overlook the fact that science is a pursuit undertaken by human beings, with all the frailties they bring to any process.