Wednesday, October 10, 2018

Googling Anxiety

Google searches for "Anxiety Help" have quintupled since 2004. Blogger de Pony Sum has the numbers that seem to show this is no fluke; among other things, searches for depression have not gone up anywhere near as much.

1 comment:

G. Verloren said...

I remember when I was young, a close friend of the family had a panic attack trying to board an airplane.


I had no real understanding of what was wrong at the time, and it was treated as something almost shameful, not to be asked or talked about - and this growing up in a household run by a practicing medical doctor. And yet, I knew about depression, even if only imperfectly, and never felt like it was a subject I couldn't talk about.

There may well be more anxiety floating around than before - in fact, I don't doubt it. But I also feel like society has shifted such that people now more openly acknowledge and talk about anxiety, and there's a greater shared awareness and understanding of the problem, alongside a greater sympathy for those who suffer it.