My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind is deeply connects to the author and the time frame in which it was written. The events in his life stems why he has an interest in the matter of anxiety and stories of his life show why the author would want to share his experiences with others. While this text was published in the 2014, Stossel was born in 1969, a time where mental health was more stigmatized than present day. The author grew up with this stigma and when less people came forward for treatment. Anxiety has been an extreme problem in Stossel’s life since he was a toddler. At just the age of 2 years old he was known to be “twitchy bundle of phobias, fears, and neuroses.” Already at age 10 he was involved …show more content…
In 2008, 50% of Canadians would tell friends or co-workers that they have a family member with a mental illness, compared to 72% who would discuss a diagnosis of cancer and 68% who would talk about a family member having diabetes, 42% of Canadians were unsure whether they would socialize with a friend who has a mental illness. 46% of Canadians thought people use the term mental illness as an excuse for bad behaviour, and 27% said they would be fearful of being around someone who suffers from serious mental illness. In the 1990s it was a common belief mental health problems were needs for attention but Stossel believed “the truth is that anxiety is at once a function of biology and philosophy, body and mind, instinct and reason, personality and culture.” This is why it’s surprising that in 2015 a stigma is still attached to mental illness. In 2015, 64% of Ontario workers would be concerned about how work would be affected if a colleague had a mental illness and 39% of Ontario workers indicate that they would not tell their managers if they were experiencing a mental health problem. It is difficult to even fathom the type of stigmas would have happen so many years ago when such little research was