We are living in an age of anxiety. A 2023 survey by the Mental Health Foundation found that one in five people in the UK experience anxiety all or most of the time. In 2024, 500 children a day were being referred for NHS anxiety treatment in England.
It is one of the epidemics of our time, says Owen O’Kane, a psychotherapist and the author of Addicted to Anxiety: How to Break the Habit. “When we look at what is happening in the world at the moment, the one thing we have an abundance of is uncertainty. If you look at a textbook definition of anxiety, it is an intolerance of uncertainty.”
