Stress & Unrest

DR QURATULAIN ZAIDI of Mind N Life ponders the city’s current problems and the issue of stress.

At the time that I’m writing this in mid-November, the protests and demonstrations have escalated in Hong Kong streets. The familiar roads that had a feeling of safety are now blocked, and filled with armed police and crowds wearing black clothes and masks. My heart rate certainly went up when I wasn’t able to make my way home one evening, and an unfamiliar smell wafted my way. As I navigated alternative routes to get back to my son, I just felt sad – sad at what is happening to the city I have called home for the last decade.

This isn’t the first time I’ve experienced political uncertainty – I was very young when my family had to leave my country of birth forever in the middle of the night to seek refuge in the UK because my father’s life was at risk.

Civil unrest and social instability have led to major transitions of societies in modern history. Social instability has spread rapidly over the past several years all over the world, from nonviolent protest movements in Tunisia and Egypt that toppled long-established authoritarian regimes, to a protest movement that evolved to a full-blown civil war in Libya.

Here in Hong Kong, we witnessed the Umbrella Movement in 2014, and, since June, protests have been escalating to a point where schools have been cancelled, the transport system is paralysed, and we find the city in the grips of increasingly violent protests.

Effect on mental health

The impact of civil unrest on our mental health can be long-lasting. Recently, I was working with a teenager who came in to see me for extreme anxiety. He had spent the first seven years of his life in a war zone. His bus rides to school were often unpredictable. This was understandably stressful for him. When his parents would go out, he was constantly checking if they were okay. The stress and anxiety that manifested in those early years are now debilitating for him.