The COVID-19 pandemic caused a significant increase in anxiety and depression among adults.
The World Health Organization reported a 25% increase in anxiety and depression during the first year of the pandemic.
And the numbers have been rising since then.
Anxiety rates increased this year, with 43% of US adults reporting feeling more anxious than the previous year, according to the American Psychiatric Association (APA). This is up from 37% in 2023 and 32% in 2022.
“Living in a world of constant news of global and local turmoil, some anxiety is natural and expected,” said Dr. Petros Levounis, APA president.
“But what stands out here is that Americans are reporting more anxious feelings than in past years. This increase may be due to the unprecedented exposure that we have to everything that happens in the world around us, or to an increased awareness and reporting of anxiety. Either way, if people have these feelings, they are not alone, and they can seek help from us.”
Fox News reports on a Harvard professor who teaches how to “thrive with anxiety.” Here’s the start of the story:
Facing anxiety head-on and approaching it differently can enhance your life.
That’s according to David H. Rosmarin, PhD, a psychologist and associate professor at Harvard Medical School, who delivers the advice in his new book, “Thriving with Anxiety: 9 Tools to Make Your Anxiety Work for You.”
Rosmarin shared with Fox News Digital that overcoming his own journey with anxiety allowed him to better help others.
In “Thriving with Anxiety,” he writes that he unexpectedly found himself suffering from the disorder as he set up an anxiety clinic in New York City in 2011.
He had already established a name for himself in Boston, but was struggling to get patient referrals in New York while facing mounting expenses and a tough commute between the two cities.
Rosmarin writes, “A wave of anxiety swept over me. This was followed quickly by a sense of self-criticism for being hypocritical, followed by a surge of catastrophic thinking.”
He describes feeling embarrassed and “headed for failure” — wondering how he could help people overcome their anxiety when he was suffering from it himself.