Stress as an essential cause of mental illness
Stress can cause all kinds of psychological disorder, such as anxiety disorders, obsessivecompulsive disorder and schizophrenia. In fact, these illnesses are commonly stressrelated. Stress is not merely a cause, but an indispensable cause of mental illness. According to some researches done, it is undeniable that stress does play an important role in causing mental health problems. In the United Kingdom, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and Active Health Partners have conducted a research on the effect of stress on mental health and work performance. The result suggests that stress, depression and anxiety contribute to over 50% of mental health problems and they are increasingly found on the Kingdom’s workers. On average, an employee takes accumulatively 21 days of sick leave as affected by stress. Furthermore, failing to cope with stress, depression among employees may arise and the average sick leave will step up to 30 days. (yourpeoplemanager.com) Another survey launched by the Mental Health Foundation in the United Kingdom suggests similar result on the labour force. Involving employees in over 800 companies, the result shows that “work-related stress is the biggest occupational health problems in the United Kingdom”. The major cause of the absenteeism through mental ill-health is worker’s anxiety and stress condition. Stress is once again proven to be a main cause of mental illnesses in daily working environment. (Gray 2000: Mental Health in the Workplace –
Tackling the Effects of Stress)
Apart from the above statistics, the universality of stress causing mental health problems can also be revealed by common mental disorders. Anxiety exists because of stress when stress impedes some messaging of the brain and makes human nervous and less happy. In the United States, anxiety disorders are the most prevalent mental illness, affecting both children and adults. Spending related to anxiety disorders exceeds 42 billion per year, which is one third of the total mental health bill. (Statistics from Anxiety Disorders Association of America)Though the disorders can attribute to biological reasons such as genes, stressors in life causing anxiety are a major component leading to the disorders also. Besides anxiety disorders, stress is believed by many to be one of the causes of other common disorders, including dissociate identity disorder, behavior disorder and schizophrenia. Regarding the prevalence of the mental illness triggered by stress, it seems that there is no reason that can refute stress as a major cause of mental illness. Supported by various statistics and evidence, stress causing most of the major psychological disorders is supposed to be the major cause of mental illness.