How to Solve the World’s Mental Health Crisis – Part 1/3 Understanding the Crisis
Disclaimer: The entire content of this article is based on the opinions of the author. It is intended for informational and educational purposes only. The information in this article is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified healthcare professional and is not intended as medical advice. Please consult your healthcare professional if you suffer from chronic stress, anxiety, or depression.
In 2023 people are the unhappiest they have ever been. 540 million people worldwide suffer from anxiety or depression: That’s about 10% of the world’s adult population. Over 30 % of people around the world reported feeling stressed, worried, and/or angry. 700 000 die of suicide each year.
Does this sound like a world where people are happy and enjoying life?
I’d say it’s quite the opposite. The way we live is causing us enormous stress, anxiety, and depression.
The thing is, it does not have to be this way, but we just don’t know how to do things differently.
I should know, I was stuck with chronic stress, anxiety, and depression for years.
But there was a way out for me that opened up after some adverse life events. These events made me realize fundamentally important things about life and the way we live it, allowing me to heal in the process.
Now I’m here to share what I learned.
In this three-part series, we’ll take a look at the issue by answering the following questions:
- Why does the way we live make us anxious and depressed?
- Does the world really have a mental health crisis?
- If it does, how do we solve it?
Let’s get started, shall we: The problem’s not going to solve itself (unfortunately). I’ll break down the previous questions in more detail.
Part 1: Life and the way we live it — Stress, Anxiety, Depression, Suicide
The World Happiness Report states that “Happiness represents the ultimate goal in life and the truest measure of well-being”. I’m inclined to agree. There are very few people (or none at all) who say that they don’t want to be happy.
Happiness is what we are really after when we stress about fulfilling any of our wants or needs.
The World Happiness Report also states, that “mental health is the single most important determinant for individual happiness”.
What does this mean?
It means that having good mental health is crucial for your happiness. But I learned that it also means the opposite:
Learning how to be happy will allow you to heal many mental health issues.
Just like gratitude, yoga, juggling, or anything really, happiness is a skill you can learn.
What do I know about mental health problems?
A few years ago I considered myself very fortunate (I still do, but for different reasons).
I had a university degree in marketing. Worked a job at a corporate bank as a Key Account Manager. That job was a perfect fit for me. It was everything I had ever dreamed of.
I was surrounded by amazing people. I went to parties, traveled, and had fun. Financially I was pretty secure. Life was (supposed to be) pretty sweet.
I thought I had life figured out. I had done everything “right”, succeeded in achieving my goals, and therefore I expected to be happy.
But even with all I had achieved, there was always a feeling in the back of my mind that I still wasn’t happy.
I was always waiting for something more, something different. “This is cool and all, but I’m still going to need that raise if I want to buy a house”. “Sure, I have lots of relationship opportunities, but what about starting a family?”. These are some good examples of the way I thought back then.
There was always something missing. I just couldn’t be happy “in the moment”.
Have you thought about happiness?
Then one day a realization hit me:
I was completely miserable.
Why was I not happy? I could not understand what the heck was the matter. There was no reason for me not to be happy.
I was doing everything that I had learned was supposed to bring me happiness, yet I still wasn’t happy.
This sudden realization, along with some life-shaking events, like the death of my brother, losing my job, breaking up with my partner, going broke, almost having a heart attack, struggling with physical and mental health issues, you know, minor stuff like that, led me down a path of figuring out what it takes to be truly happy.
I had never given these things much thought:
- What even is happiness?
- What are the requirements for happiness?
- How do I get to be happy
- If I am happy, how do I stay happy?
Luckily, I found the answers I was looking for.
I beat my health problems, stress, anxiety, and depression. The answers and paradigm shifts can be found in my free ebook “the 3 Steps to Happiness” which you can download, for free, by filling out the form below.
The way we are taught to be happy is all wrong
Continuing with the story, it turned out that happiness is not what I thought it was.
Our model of happiness is, in fact, completely wrong.
Or at least it’s backwards.
We are taught that we need something to be happy, and the only way to achieve lasting happiness is to fulfill all the requirements and get all the things that are needed for happiness, i.e. education, a job, a family, a big house, a fancy car, lots of money, etc.
Never once are we told how to place happiness first instead of the end of a long and arduous path of doing things.
Our current way of thinking is not designed to promote individual happiness (and by the connection that The World Happiness Report makes: mental health) even though we are told it does.
What it does is keep us pursuing always more and more and more, to keep us hustling and thus the wheels of our society spinning.
For example, we are being told that we need a good education, otherwise we will miss all our chances in life.
(The day I started writing this article I saw two commercials for coaching courses for improving your grades in high school, and one for a coaching course to get into a university, all within 30 minutes of watching YouTube videos; way to prove my point, society.)
Our current model of happiness
Go to high school, then university. You need good grades for that. Once you have a degree, then you can get a high-paying job. Work your way up the corporate ladder. Get promotions, get a higher salary, get more responsibility. That way you can have the money for all the other stuff in life.
Buy a house and furnish it with the trendiest, most expensive (social media-worthy) furniture. Get a big, expensive car, preferably two. Maybe you want a family? Well, it certainly helps if you are successful at work because nobody wants to date a loser.
Then finally, after years and years of hard work, sweat, tears, and long hours, you have it all together.
You are happy, aren’t you?
Well, at least you made money for yourself and some shareholders. But at what cost to your mental well-being?
Do these things have anything to do with your identity? Do they present an opportunity to express your deepest desires in a joyful, relaxed, natural way? Does what you do represent an opportunity to fulfill your life’s purpose?
We’ll get to why this is important in the 2nd part of the story.
First, let me ask you a question: What happens if you fail?
Our “model of happiness” is producing the opposite results
Did you flunk out of college? Were you unable to start a meaningful relationship? Perhaps you didn’t make it in the corporate world, so you don’t have the money to buy the house and the car you want.
What do you do now?
Now you can never be happy! You’re a failure!
Seems harsh (and it is!), but that’s the way we are taught. What happens if we fail to meet the expectations that society has set for us? There is no plan B.
We must succeed in reaching these “benchmarks for happiness” that society places before us. There is no other way to be happy.
But it seems like it’s causing more of the opposite feeling as a byproduct.
The way we are living is causing us to become mentally ill.
The stress of fulfilling expectations that society keeps placing upon us is overwhelming.
Collectively we, the human race, have created societies based on beliefs that drive us to exhaustion and cause massive amounts of stress, anxiety, and depression.
Young people are overwhelmed with stress, anxiety, and depression
My brother was an unfortunate victim of this mentality. He never found his place in society.
He felt that he could not achieve what was expected of him. He never found his true calling or concentrated on fulfilling his desires. Instead, he felt like a failure and became severely depressed, eventually ending his own life in his late 20s.
And he wasn’t alone in feeling like this. Take a look at young adults:
- 24% of students in the United States are getting stressed about their future and finding a job after graduation.
- 60 % of college students experienced “overwhelming anxiety,” while over 40% were saddled with crippling depression
- Between the school years 2009–2015, there was a 30% increase in the number of American students who visited campus counseling centers, even though enrollment only increased by 5%.
These statistics are from the U.S. but the same applies almost everywhere. Every week I read about the declining mental well-being of our youth here in Finland.
The most common causes (or the second most common, depending on the year) for disability pension in Finland are mental health and behavioral disorders.
For people under the age of 35, mental health problems are the most common cause (77 %) for disability pensions.
And this was back in 2019. What do you think the recent pandemic did to the mental well-being of students, who could not even go to school and see their friends?
Is this working?
Think about it. Young people who should be happy, healthy, and full of life, are so stressed out and depressed that they are unable to study or work at all.
Do you think young people are just soft and can’t handle the stress of modern life, or do you think there just might be something wrong with our “model of happiness”?
To me, it seems the world we live in is designed in a way that makes us look for happiness in all the wrong places.
Worse yet, instead of finding happiness in the things our society tells us are required, we often find stress, anxiety, and depression instead.
Conclusion
The way we live is not making us happy. The growing wealth of average households should indicate a growing trend in happiness according to our current “model of happiness”.
Instead, the opposite is true: Mental health problems seem to be getting more prevalent every year.
Something is wrong in our search for happiness, and it seems like we are looking for happiness in all the wrong places: Material possessions, fame, money, etc.
There is a way to fix this, but it requires adopting a new way of thinking about happiness.
Disclaimer
The entire contents of this blog are based upon the opinions of the author. It is intended for informational and educational purposes only. The information in this blog is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. Please consult your health care professional before trying any of the products or methods based on this content. I cannot guarantee that you will be free of stress, anxiety or depression, or that you will be happy. I simply want to share with you what I have discovered during my twenty years of seeking happiness and what has worked for me may not work for you.
