by Cole Davies

For my topic and community, I specifically looked at the prevalence of anxiety and anxiety related disorders in the North and West Van communities. I found that of the three distinct areas (West Vancouver is split into an Upper and Lower section) that anxiety rates did differ. Upper West Vancouver had the lowest rates of anxiety followed by the West Vancouver Lower, with North Vancouver exhibiting the highest rates of anxiety. Following this, I decided to look specifically at the levels of mental health to see if a correlation could be found. West Vancouver Upper and Lower scored about the same (with the lower section being slightly higher), whereas North Vancouver scored quite a lot lower in terms of the quality of mental health. Finally, the general health of each community was looked at, with again, North Vancouver showcasing the lowest of the three (although much closer together this time). As such I hypothesized that there was a correlation between mental and general health and increased levels of anxiety.

Looking more into the research, there were several potential key issues that were found. Anxiety rates overall are going up and are one of the most common psychiatric disorders (Dumitrescu et al. 2021).  In addition to this, women are much more likely to develop anxiety disorders as opposed to men. Race is another factor that can contribute to the development of an anxiety disorder “providers offered counseling or talk therapy in less than 13% of all office visits. Office visits by non-Hispanic Black patients had half the odds of being offered counseling/talk therapy (P = .068) compared to those by non-Hispanic White patients” (Samander & Harmen, 2022). Other general stressors include finance’s (North and West Vancouver are extremely expensive) as well as issues between spouses and stemming from marriage. Before talking about ways to increase resilience it would be impossible to not mention the COVID-19 pandemic and the mental health impact the entire pandemic has had. With the pandemic came many different variables that all can contribute to boosting our anxiety. Sleep is one of the most important ways to decrease our anxiety as well as keep ourselves mentally healthy. When COVID-19 came, a lot of us found ourselves working and attending school from home. Furthermore, In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by a massive 25% (WHO, 2022).

In terms of factors that can increase resilience, there are a couple. However, the biggest take home message of this research is to exercise. Henriksson et al. (2022) looked at two randomized groups in which one exercised and one didn’t. The group that participated in exercising had lower rates of depression and anxiety. Furthermore, there has been research done that asserts that being in nature lowers anxiety (Keenan et al. 2021). Because North and West Vancouver are uniquely situated in nature, we are in a prime position to potentially lower mental health issues affecting us, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

References

Dumitrescu, N., Turliuc, Ş., Eva, L., Iliescu, D. M., Costea, C. F., Moroşan, G. C., Vatavu, R., Zanfirescu, R. L., & Sava, A. (2021). Risk Factors for the Development of Anxiety Disorders. Romanian Journal of Functional & Clinical, Macro- & Microscopical Anatomy & of Anthropology, 20(4), 246–256.

Henriksson, M., Wall, A., Nyberg, J., Adiels, M., Lundin, K., Bergh, Y., Eggertsen, R., Danielsson, L., Kuhn, H. G., Westerlund, M., Åberg, N. D., Waern, M., & Åberg, M. (2022). Effects of exercise on symptoms of anxiety in primary care patients: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Affective Disorders, 297, 26–34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2021.10.006

Keenan, R., Lumber, R., Richardson, M., & Sheffield, D. (2021). Three good things in nature: A nature-based positive psychological intervention to improve mood and well-being for depression and anxiety. Journal of Public Mental Health, 20(4), 243–250. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPMH-02-2021-0029