Mental stress on the rise

The level of mental stress has gone up to an unprecedented level during the last 40 years under the impact of major changes in Saudi society.
Addressing a press conference here yesterday, Abdullah Al-Subaie, one of the key researchers supervising the first Saudi national health and stress survey (SNHSS), attributed the trend to various factors, including competition, social and family problems, which were also aggravated by the era of globalization, which has made citizens vulnerable to a higher degree of mental stress than in the past.
Al-Subaie, who is a professor at King Saud University in the psychiatry division, said modern life is full of deadlines, frustration and demands, but noted that stress is not always bad, adding that it can help in performance under pressure.
As a result, Saudis are facing psychological and other health problems pushing up the cost of health care, said Al-Subaie on the launch of the second phase of the survey.
He said people are facing work-related stress with symptoms such as aches and pains, diarrhea or constipation, nausea, dizziness, chest pain, rapid heartbeat, agitation, an inability to relax, a sense of loneliness, sleeping too much or too little and isolating oneself from others.
“The main objective of this study is to estimate the percentage of health disorders in the different regions of the Kingdom and to measure the magnitude of the problem, as well as methods of treatment and obstacles that prevent access to medical care,” he added.
Speaking on the occasion, Sultan Al-Sedairy, CEO of the Prince Salman Center for Disability Research (PSCDR), said the program is being conducted for the first time in the country. It has been sponsored by the PSCDR in Riyadh, the Ministry of Health, the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center, the Department of Statistics and Information at the Ministry of Economy and Planning, the Ministry of Social Affairs, and King Saud University, in cooperation with global institutions such as World Health Organization, Harvard University and the University of Michigan.
The survey began three years ago in Saudi Arabia. Iraq and Lebanon already conducted the survey with 29 other countries. Saudi Arabia is the 30th country to conduct it, according to Yasmin Al-Tawaijri, researcher and a key pioneer of the Saudi team. It was previously conducted by the Harvard University and Michigan with the cooperation of the WHO. She said: “In our case, we have to start from scratch because of the social and environment difference of every country.”
The survey is considered an important nationwide study that provides a vision for clinicians and health policymakers to establish health services in Saudi Arabia.
Outlining the objectives of the program, Al-Subaie told Arab News: “This kind of research aims mainly at the development of the psychological health services in the KSA. The purpose of this study is represented in the identification of health problems in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as well as the methodology of treatment and obstacles that hinder access to medical care, in addition to the evaluation of the standard of disability resulting from these disorders.”
He added: “We aim at bridging the gap between knowing the size of the problem and what best solutions should be used to overcome it — a huge gap that can only be closed through stronger partnership, greater collaboration between institutions and increased funding.”
Mona Shahab, the program manager, said the SNHSS is a community-based survey which will be conducted among a cross-section of Saudi society in urban and rural areas. It will be a random selection of 10,000 Saudi respondents, both male and female, in the 15-65 age group. The sample will cover 13 regions in the Kingdom. Face-to-face interviews will be conducted by teams from the Ministry of Health that have been trained and certified.
She said they have conducted the main interview with 1,111 individuals in Makkah Province, 339 in Riyadh and 358 in the Eastern Province since January this year. They hope to meet the target of 7,000 by December.