Key points
- Anxiety is a normal response to threat or uncertainty. It becomes a condition when worry is persistent, hard to control, out of proportion to the situation and starts to affect daily life. Generalised anxiety disorder is the most common form.
- It is genuinely more common than it was. The Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey found common mental health conditions among 16 to 64 year olds in England rose to 22.6% in 2023/24, from 18.9% in 2014 and 17.6% in 2007.
- Young adults have seen the steepest rise, with rates among 16 to 24 year olds increasing from 18.9% in 2014 to 25.8% in 2023/24.
- Part of why it feels everywhere is that more people are seeking help. The share of adults with symptoms receiving treatment rose from 24.4% in 2007 to 47.7% in 2023/24. The word is also used far more loosely in everyday language, often for ordinary stress.
- Effective help exists. NICE-recommended approaches include guided self-help, cognitive behavioural therapy and applied relaxation, and in England you can refer yourself to NHS Talking Therapies without seeing a GP first.
- Everyday foundations matter: regular movement, consistent sleep, and cutting back on caffeine and alcohol. Magnesium, vitamin B6, vitamin B12 and folate contribute to normal psychological function, which is about everyday nutrition rather than a treatment for anxiety.
- If anxiety lasts for weeks, stops you doing things you would normally do, or includes panic attacks, speak to your GP. If you are struggling to cope right now, call NHS 111 or Samaritans on 116 123.
If it feels like everyone is anxious right now, you are not imagining it. Anxiety is in the headlines, in workplace well-being programmes, and in the everyday vocabulary of teenagers and tweens, who talk about it with a candour that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. This article is for anyone who wants to understand what is actually going on: what anxiety is, whether it is really increasing or just more visible, how the world around us feeds it, and what the evidence says you can do about it. It is written for adults managing their own health, and for parents trying to make sense of what their children are describing.
What anxiety actually is
Anxiety is a normal human emotion. The NHS describes it as a feeling of unease, such as worry or fear, that can be mild or severe. Everyone feels it at some point: before an exam, a job interview, a medical appointment, a difficult conversation. In those moments it is doing its job. Anxiety is part of the body's threat-detection system, a state of heightened alertness designed to help you prepare for and respond to a challenge.
The physical sensations are familiar: a faster heartbeat, shallow breathing, tense muscles, a churning stomach, difficulty concentrating. These reflect activation of the body's stress-response systems, including the sympathetic nervous system and the release of hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. Together, these responses help direct energy and resources towards dealing with a perceived challenge. When the challenge passes, parasympathetic activity helps the body return towards its resting state.
The distinction that matters is between this ordinary, proportionate anxiety and an anxiety disorder. According to the NHS, generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) is diagnosed when someone feels anxious about a wide range of situations rather than one specific event, finds it hard to control the worry, and experiences it most days over a long period, to the point where it interferes with daily life. Other anxiety disorders include panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, and specific phobias. The common thread is persistence and impairment, not simply the presence of the feeling.
That distinction is worth holding on to, because the word 'anxiety' now covers everything from a nervous flutter before a presentation to a condition that stops someone leaving the house. Both are real. They are not the same thing, and they do not call for the same response.
Is anxiety really on the rise?
The short answer is yes, but the picture is more layered than the headlines suggest.
The most rigorous data for England comes from the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey, a large household survey commissioned by NHS England and carried out by the National Centre for Social Research. Unlike online polls, it uses structured clinical interviews rather than self-labelling. The 2023/24 survey, published in June 2025, found that 22.6% of adults aged 16 to 64 had a common mental health condition, up from 18.9% in 2014 and 17.6% in 2007. Generalised anxiety disorder was the most common single condition, identified in 7.5% of adults. The rise was steepest in 16 to 24 year olds, where the rate climbed from 18.9% in 2014 to 25.8% in 2023/24, and women were more than twice as likely as men to be affected (36.1% against 16.3%).
Among children and young people, the Mental Health of Children and Young People in England 2023 survey found that around one in five 8 to 25 year olds had a probable mental disorder: 20.3% of 8 to 16 year olds and 23.3% of 17 to 19 year olds. Rates rose sharply between 2017 and 2020 and have stayed at that higher level since.
The pandemic accelerated an existing trend rather than creating it. The World Health Organization estimated that global prevalence of anxiety and depression rose by around 25% in the first year of COVID-19, driven by isolation, uncertainty, bereavement and financial stress. But the English survey series shows the increase in common mental health conditions was already under way well before 2020.
So the measured rise is real. What the numbers cannot tell us on their own is how much of it reflects more people becoming unwell, and how much reflects more people recognising, naming and reporting what they feel. Both are happening at once.
Why it feels like everyone is anxious
Two researchers at the University of Oxford, Lucy Foulkes and Jack Andrews, put a name to this puzzle in 2023: the prevalence inflation hypothesis, published in New Ideas in Psychology. They argue that a decade of mental health awareness campaigns has had two effects at the same time. The first is improved recognition: people who would once have suffered in silence now identify what they are experiencing and seek help, which is an unambiguously good thing. The second is what they call overinterpretation: some people come to describe ordinary, manageable distress in clinical language, and in a proportion of cases that labelling can become self-fulfilling, changing how a person sees themselves and what they believe they can cope with.
A related idea from psychologist Nick Haslam, published in Psychological Inquiry in 2016, is concept creep: over time, the meanings of psychological terms like trauma, abuse and anxiety have gradually widened to include milder and more everyday experiences than they originally described.
This is where teenagers and tweens come in. The generation growing up now has a vocabulary for emotional states that previous generations simply did not have, and they use it openly. That openness is not a problem in itself; it is the direct result of the reduced stigma that campaigners fought for. The complication is that a 13 year old saying 'I have anxiety' may be describing a diagnosed disorder, a difficult term at school, or the normal discomfort of adolescence, and the same word is being used for all three. The 2023 NHS survey found that children with a probable mental disorder were five times more likely to have been bullied in person, and that over half of 17 to 25 year olds worried about the impact of climate change. Young people have real things to be anxious about. The task for the adults around them is to take the feeling seriously without automatically treating it as an illness.
The knowledgeable friend's view on this is straightforward: language matters, and precision is kind. Naming ordinary anxiety as ordinary does not dismiss it. It tells someone that what they feel is a normal response to a hard situation, and that it will pass, which is often exactly what they need to hear.
How current events shape the way we feel
The world does not need to be more dangerous for us to feel more threatened. It only needs to be more visible. A smartphone delivers every conflict, disaster and political crisis on earth to your pocket, continuously, in a format designed to keep you scrolling. The human brain has what psychologists call a negativity bias: we pay more attention to threatening information than to reassuring information because, for most of our evolutionary history, that kept us alive. Infinite news feeds exploit that bias without meaning to.
The Mental Health Foundation describes doomscrolling as a natural response to a world that feels unstable, one that usually starts with a reasonable wish to understand and feel prepared, but which tends to leave people more worried, irritable and unable to switch off. Its May 2026 polling of more than 4,000 UK adults, carried out by Opinium for Mental Health Awareness Week, found that 57% of people had used at least one harmful coping behaviour in the previous month when they felt stressed, anxious or low. Nearly a quarter (23%) had spent more time scrolling social media and online to cope, and among under-35s that figure was 37%. The same poll offered a hopeful counterpoint: 72% had also taken at least one helpful action, most commonly spending time in nature (30%), doing something enjoyable like a hobby (28%) or being physically active (27%).
The point is not that you should stop reading the news. It is that the way most of us now consume it, in fragments, on our phones, late at night, with no natural end point, keeps the threat-detection system switched on long after there is anything you can do about what you have read. The perception of anxiety as a permanent state is partly a product of a media environment that never lets the alarm switch off.
What you can do about it
Whether your anxiety is a passing response to a hard month or something more persistent, there are things that help. The order below is deliberate: knowing when to get professional support comes first, because nothing else on this list is a substitute for it.
When to reach out for help
Speak to your GP if anxiety is affecting your daily life, has lasted more than a few weeks, or is accompanied by panic attacks, persistent low mood or physical symptoms you cannot explain. You do not need to be in crisis to ask. In England you can also refer yourself directly to NHS Talking Therapies without going through your GP, for free, confidential support that includes cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and guided self-help.
There is a good reason CBT is the first thing you will be offered. NICE guideline CG113 on generalised anxiety disorder and panic disorder recommends a stepped-care approach in which psychological therapies, particularly CBT and applied relaxation, are the core evidence-based treatments, with medication considered where those are not enough. CBT works by helping you notice the patterns of thought and behaviour that keep anxiety going, and change them. It is practical and time-limited, and its effects tend to last.
If you would prefer to talk to someone straight away, Anxiety UK runs a helpline and offers information specifically about anxiety. If you ever feel you cannot keep yourself safe, call 999 or go to A&E, or call 111 for urgent mental health support.
For nutritional support, a registered nutritional therapist, such as a member of BANT, can look at your diet and lifestyle as a whole and work alongside, never instead of, your GP or therapist.
Everyday techniques with evidence behind them
Breathe out for longer than you breathe in. A randomised controlled trial from Stanford University, published in Cell Reports Medicine in 2023 by Balban and colleagues, compared three five-minute daily breathing exercises against mindfulness meditation over a month. The most effective was 'cyclic sighing': a double inhale through the nose followed by a long, slow exhale through the mouth, repeated for five minutes. Participants doing this reported better daily mood and lower breathing rates than those meditating. The mechanism is thought to involve the vagus nerve, which carries the parasympathetic 'calm down' signal, and long exhalations appear to stimulate it. It costs nothing and you can do it anywhere.
Move your body. A 2018 systematic review and meta-analysis published in BMC Health Services Research by Aylett and colleagues found that exercise, particularly at higher intensity, reduced anxiety symptoms in people with clinical anxiety, and NICE lists physical activity among its recommendations. You do not need a gym: a brisk 20 minute walk, ideally outdoors, is a good starting point and one most people can sustain.
Guard your sleep. Anxiety and poor sleep feed each other: worry makes it harder to fall asleep, and short sleep makes the threat-detection system more reactive the following day. A consistent wake time, daylight in the morning, and a screen-free wind-down are the basics that make the biggest difference. If sleep itself has become the thing you are anxious about, that is worth raising with your GP, because CBT for insomnia is highly effective and available on the NHS.
Set boundaries with the news. The Mental Health Foundation suggests choosing when you read the news rather than letting it find you, turning off breaking-news notifications, and noticing how you feel after scrolling. A practical version: check the news once or twice a day at a set time, on a device you then put down, and never in the hour before bed.
Spend time in nature and with people. A 2019 study of nearly 20,000 people in England, published in Scientific Reports by White and colleagues, found that those who spent at least 120 minutes a week in natural environments were significantly more likely to report good health and high wellbeing than those who spent none, and it did not matter whether that time came in one long visit or several short ones. Social connection works in the same direction. The Mental Health Foundation's polling shows that isolating yourself is one of the most common responses to feeling anxious, and one of the least helpful.
Nutrition: supporting a nervous system that is working hard
Nothing you eat, and no supplement you take, will treat an anxiety disorder, and any brand that tells you otherwise is not one to trust. What diet can do is support the nervous system in doing its normal job, which matters when that system is under sustained demand. Three practical things come first, before any bottle.
Look at caffeine honestly. Caffeine is a stimulant that mimics several of the physical sensations of anxiety: a racing heart, restlessness, jitteriness. A 2024 meta-analysis published in Frontiers in Psychology by Liu and colleagues found that caffeine intake was associated with increased anxiety in healthy adults, with a much larger effect at intakes above 400 mg a day, roughly four cups of filter coffee. Sensitivity varies enormously between people, but if you are anxious and drinking several coffees a day, this is the easiest experiment you can run: halve it for two weeks and see what changes.
Eat regularly. Going for long periods without eating can, in some people, lead to symptoms such as shakiness, irritability or light-headedness. When blood glucose falls, the body can respond by releasing hormones including adrenaline, which can produce sensations that overlap with anxiety. Meals built around protein, fibre and slow-release carbohydrate keep blood sugar steadier across the day. Alcohol deserves a mention here too: it can feel calming in the moment, but it disrupts sleep and is well known for producing a rebound of low mood and anxiety the following day.
Then, the nutrients your nervous system depends on. Several vitamins and minerals have authorised health claims on the GB Nutrition and Health Claims Register that describe their role in normal psychological and nervous system function. Magnesium contributes to normal psychological function, to the normal functioning of the nervous system, and to the reduction of tiredness and fatigue. It is a mineral many people fall short of, and the form matters: magnesium bisglycinate, where magnesium is bound to the amino acid glycine, is generally well tolerated and gentle on the digestive system, which makes it a sensible choice for daily use. Magnesium comes in several forms and we make more than one. Bisglycinate suits general daily use; magnesium L-threonate, the form used in our new Magtein product, is the one to look at if your interest is specifically in supporting normal psychological and cognitive function. The same authorised magnesium claims apply to both, and our magnesium L-threonate article sets out the differences in full. The B vitamins, including thiamine (B1), niacin (B3), B6, folate, B12 and biotin, each contribute to normal psychological function, and B6, B12 and folate also contribute to the reduction of tiredness and fatigue. Vitamin C contributes to normal psychological function and to the normal functioning of the nervous system. Omega-3 DHA contributes to the maintenance of normal brain function, at a daily intake of 250 mg.
These are not treatments. They are the raw materials a nervous system needs to function normally, and a diet that is short of them makes everything else on this list harder. A varied diet with green vegetables, nuts, seeds, wholegrains, oily fish, eggs and dairy or fortified alternatives supplies most of them. Where diet falls short, or where a practitioner has identified a specific gap, a well-formulated supplement can help fill it.
At Metabolics we make our magnesium, B complex and omega-3 products in our own facility in Wiltshire, without binders, flowing agents or fillers, because when someone is choosing to support their nervous system we think they should know exactly what they are taking. If you are unsure which form or which nutrient is right for you, a registered nutritional therapist can help you decide, and our team is always happy to talk through the range.
Common questions
What is the difference between stress and anxiety?
Stress is a response to an external pressure, such as a deadline or a difficult situation, and usually eases when the pressure does. Anxiety is the feeling of worry or fear itself, and it can persist without an obvious external cause. The two overlap heavily and produce many of the same physical sensations.
Is anxiety a mental illness?
Anxiety as an emotion is not an illness; it is a normal part of being human. An anxiety disorder, such as generalised anxiety disorder or panic disorder, is a recognised mental health condition diagnosed when anxiety is persistent, hard to control and interferes with daily life. A GP or mental health professional can help you tell the difference.
Can supplements help with anxiety?
No supplement treats anxiety or an anxiety disorder. Certain nutrients, including magnesium, the B vitamins and vitamin C, have authorised health claims describing their contribution to normal psychological function and the normal functioning of the nervous system. Supporting those functions through diet, and supplements where diet falls short, is one part of looking after yourself, alongside professional support where it is needed.
How do I know when to see a doctor about anxiety?
The NHS advises seeing a GP if anxiety is affecting your daily life or causing you distress, if it has continued for several weeks, or if self-help has not worked. In England you can also self-refer to NHS Talking Therapies. If you feel you cannot keep yourself safe, call 999 or 111.
The takeaway
- • Anxiety is a normal emotion with a useful job. An anxiety disorder is when that emotion becomes persistent, hard to control and disabling. The word now covers both, and it helps to know which you are dealing with.
- • Common mental health conditions in England have risen measurably since 2007, with generalised anxiety disorder the most common, and the sharpest increase among young adults and women.
- • Part of that rise is better recognition, which is good. Part is a wider use of clinical language for everyday distress, which is worth being aware of, especially with teenagers.
- • A news environment that never switches off keeps the threat system running. Choosing when and how you consume it is a real intervention, not a luxury.
- • If anxiety is affecting your life, speak to your GP or self-refer to NHS Talking Therapies. CBT is the first-line treatment for good reason.
- • Slow exhalations, movement, sleep, nature and connection all have evidence behind them and cost nothing.
- • Diet supports the nervous system's normal function: review caffeine, eat regularly, and make sure you are getting the magnesium, B vitamins, vitamin C and omega-3 it depends on.
