NetDoctor.co.uk Emotional Health Survey Results
Written by Christine Webber, sex and relationships expert, psychotherapist and survey originator.
Key survey points Happiness Nearly a quarter of men and women fear a hopeless future. One in three feel downright miserable and that life is passing them by. One quarter feel life is unfair. One in 10 feel that fate has dealt them a miserable life about which they can do nothing. Nearly one in 10 think their death would make things better for others.
Sex and relationships Health One in three women and one in five men worry about their health, with more than one in 10 people suffering frequent panic attacks. A quarter of men and women are unsatisfied with their sex lives - with 40 per cent of women and 10 per cent of men admitting to often faking orgasms. Three times as many men as women believe it is impossible to be happy outside of a relationship..
Work One in four people claim often to feel unhappy at work, one in three feel exhausted by work, and a third feel unappreciated and underpaid. A third think work takes up too much of their time, with 40 per cent claiming they find it difficult to give up unsatisfying employment in search of something better.
Christine's survey comment At first sight, this survey makes pretty depressing reading. And since it was published I have been inundated with calls from the press and broadcast media asking if it can possibly be true that we Brits are such a joyless lot. In fact one query came from a radio station in Australia. So bad news travels fast! There are several points to be made here. The first is that people who are visiting NetDoctor.co.uk are interested in their physical and emotional health. They may also be visiting the site because they are worried about these things. So perhaps some of the people who completed the survey are more unhappy or stressed than average. Stark honesty Having said that, we have been astonished by the stark honesty of the answers. To me this demonstrates that people feel comfortable about exposing their innermost thoughts and fears over the Internet. It is clearly a huge relief to many users to be able to express their feelings with the utmost honestly in a safe, confidential and entirely anonymous way. So I am quite confident that our results do accurately reflect how we British are really feeling. The same might not have been true had the survey been conducted through a magazine or newspaper - since people are generally anxious that other folk might see what they've written. Equally, had the survey taken the form of a face-to-face interview, I'm sure many of those surveyed would have 'toned down' what they wanted to say.
I must say that I'm not amazed or shocked by these results, but they do confirm what I see as very worrying trends. For example, I am not at all surprised that 95 per cent of people claimed to feel exhausted much of the time. I think exhaustion is the factor most responsible for people's stress and misery today. So one golden message of the survey must be to try to get more sleep! I am sad to see that about 84 per cent of respondents said they rarely felt 'quite fit and well' But I am also aware that many people today have huge expectations. They don't expect to get ill, and they want to feel vibrant and energetic and efficient and successful all the time. But maybe they can't. Maybe these expectations are just unrealistic. So, what DID surprise me in the survey? Apparently 10 per cent of men sometimes fake an orgasm. Do their partners not notice, I ask myself? A staggering 50 per cent of men feel they don't get enough cuddling. This admission is certainly amazing. Men would never tell their mates they feel this way. It takes an Internet survey to discover the truth! But for all the partners of these men, the message is clear. Men don't just want sex - they want cuddling, romance and love. I was also surprised to see that 60 per cent of men - far more than women - believed that they could not be happy if they were not in a relationship. Traditionally women have felt that way - but many no longer feel the same. So it is possible that these changes in women's attitudes and aspirations are at least partially responsible for millennium man's sense of misery and apparent lack of confidence. Men are also very worried about expressing themselves in public. Women have long believed that men aren't good at articulating feelings. But it may come as a bit of a shock to the female gender to realise that well over a third of men are deeply anxious about expressing themselves generally. This then is obviously a source of stress for the growing number of men whose employment involves them in giving presentations and speeches. And this in turn explains why on the NetDoctor site I am answering a growing number of emails from men who feel phobic and panic stricken in the workplace, and at leisure. So - people are stressed, unhappy and, above all, very, very tired. What can be done about this? Most problems can be divided up into two types: those you can do something about and those you can't. Make sure that where you can alter things for the better, you do. You may only be able to change things a little bit at a time, but this is far better than not changing them at all. So if you're always rushed, vow to allocate an extra ten minutes for your journeys. If you never see friends, pick up the phone right now and fix to see someone you care about this weekend. If you hate being overweight, join Weight Watchers. Also, it's important to recognise that being unhappy is a habit - a pernicious one. So try to replace that habit with a better one - that of being happy. You can cultivate a happiness habit. And you can make a start by actually acknowledging those moments when you do smile, when you do have a laugh and when you do feel content or even joyful. If you wait for happiness to happen - you'll wait forever. So go looking for it instead.
October 2000