The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines a pandemic as “a worldwide spread of a new disease.”
In March 2020 for example, the WHO officially declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic due to the global spread and severity of the disease.
Medical research estimates as much as 90% of all illness and disease is stress related.
Stress can e.g., interfere with physical functioning and is linked to heart disease, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, just for starters.
Yet the WHO has called Stress the “Health Epidemic of the 21st Century”.
Dictionary.com defines “epidemic” as a disease “affecting many persons at the same time, and spreading from person to person in a locality where the disease is not permanently prevalent.”
Now far be it for us to be asking questions beyond our station, but we do wonder why the WHO (and others) are appearing to be reluctant to classify Stress as an international pandemic, as opposed to a localised epidemic?!
And how the heck can Stress not be ‘permanently prevalent’ in the same way as it appears Covid is?
We appreciate that the term ‘pandemic’ usually applies to ‘infectious’ diseases such as Covid, but can we not as an international community accept that people ‘catch’ Stress from all sorts of different and unique sources – workplace pressure, pace of life, demands of modern technology & lack of a identity to name but 4 off the cuff – in a way they have never done before.
And that from untreated Stress, people can develop depression and even suicidal tendencies.
Affording Stress a higher level formal pandemic status that its undeniable prevalence across all continents without exception merits (particularly after COVID, as a result of which virtually all experts agree stress levels have soared even further) would enable the international community to work together to find international solutions to a global problem.
Delivering such a collaborative message should be easier than ever before given the entire world has access to a greater or lesser degree to the Internet.
This makes sense because, unlike economics, Stress is not specific to the laws and customs of a particular country – it is universal.
Here at StressbustingExpert™, we therefore believe the recognised incidence and impact of stress deserves that international recognition and cooperation.
We cannot understand, given the calculable and extortionate cost of Stress to health systems and businesses across the world, that the financial as well as moral rationale for this has not been embraced 😲.
In 2002 (yes, you read that right - over 20 years ago), the last time the cost of Stress was reviewed at a European wide level, that cost was EURO 20 Billion per year in lost time and health provision to Europe alone.
We reckon you could easily treble that number now.
The global phenomenon which is Stress must thus be given the same level of priority as the physical ailments it causes, otherwise society’s tail will still be wagging its dog for more generations to come at unimaginable cost.
We cannot allow legal definitions to fetter our addressing one of the greatest challenges to our age – they need reframed to represent the modern era if that’s what the lawyers demand as a condition to decisive action.
Practical action involves looking at Stress and resulting Depression in a different way which validates rather than alienates those affected and encourages them to come forward rather than suffer in silence for fear of embarrassment or shame.
Britain’s exit from Europe ought not in any way to have affected this moral as opposed to legal endeavour.
Here is wishing for a wind change in the years to come which recognises that to address physical illness effectively, so too must mental conditions be addressed, and vice versa.
More joined up thinking, in other words 🤞, or to coin the title of our previous post, its time to "Nail the Moment"!
LOL, MikeyM&LouLoU™ (getting off our high horse now 😁!)💛💚💙 xxxxxxxx