06/04/2024
April 6th is Sustainable Healthcare Day.
This year, our focus is stress and stress related illnesses. Stress is one of the great public health challenges of our time. For too many of us, it is a common and regular occurrence. 74% of UK adults say that have felt so stressed at some point over the last year they felt overwhelmed or unable to cope (Source: Mental Health Foundation survey 2018).
Stress will always exist and affect most of us from time to time. However, with greater awareness, we can help to prevent it, or at least manage it and prevent it from becoming chronic, which can lead to a range of other mental health conditions. It is also linked to physical health conditions like heart disease, problems with our immune system, insomnia and digestive problems. These conditions are harder to deal with, affect people’s lives, and costs the NHS huge amounts of money.
IFPA members have an important role to play in addressing stress and helping to prevent chronic stress and stress-related illnesses. With greater availability and use of complementary, traditional and natural healthcare therapies such as Aromatherapy, we can have a positive impact on patient health and wellbeing, reduce susceptibility to stress, and facilitate coping with stress. This would reduce the need for people to access NHS services for stress-related illnesses, thereby saving public funds and increasing capacity.
