Some plain facts about mental health:-

1 in 4 people will suffer with some kind of mental health issue, that means that ¼ of the population will suffer from a mental health issue in a year, with anxiety and depression being listed as the most common.

One in six people will experience a neurotic disorder such as anxiety or depression. Anxiety disorders are also estimated to affect 3.3% of children and young adults in the UK. While 2.6% of the population experience depression and 4.7% have anxiety problems, as many as 9.7% suffer mixed depression and anxiety, making it the most prevalent mental health problem in the population as a whole.

About 1.2% of the UK population experience panic disorders, rising to 1.7% for those experiencing it with or without agoraphobia. However Around 1.9% of British adults experience a phobia of some description, and women are twice as likely to be affected by this problem as men. The following points can be associated with anxiety:-

• Almost one in five people feel anxious all of the time or a lot of the time.
• One-fifth of people who have experienced anxiety do nothing to cope with it.
• Comfort eating is used by a quarter of people to cope with feelings of anxiety, and women and young people are more likely to use this as a way of coping.

Women are more likely to experience mental health problem than men, this could be because women are more likely to report mental health issues to their GP than men, although men are more like to suffer with a drug or alcohol addiction then women and 10% of children will have suffered mental health issues at any given time usually depression.

Depression affects 1 in 5 older people living in the community and as many 2 in 5 living in care homes.

The suicide rate in the UK shows that men are at great risk of killing themselves, with suicide remaining the most common cause of death in men under the age of 35.

Women are more like to self-harm. The UK has one of the highest rates of self-harm in Europe, at 400 per 100,000 of the population. People with current mental health problems are 20 times more likely than others to report having harmed themselves in the past, listing poisoning and self-injury as the most common form of self-harm amongst adults.