Mental Health- the dominance of fear

In my life I have noticed that fear has grown in importance and impact. When I was younger people did fear, but did not fear as much as now..

The truth is that the media (yes potentially I am singing a song you have heard before) discovered that fear drove circulation, this increased sales and made the owners more money. So they pushed fear, the faster media got, the wider its spread, the greater the impact of fear.

So in the UK there has been an uplift in the news regarding “knife crimes”, now if you analyse them and relate them to the size of the population, you discover that the number of knife crimes/deaths a year in the Uk are at a similar level to the late 40’s. If you take this information and then apply population size you discover that the actual chance of being involved in a knife issue/crime is significantly lower.. In the late 40-‘s there was 48 million citizens of the UK, in 2020 there is roughly 68 million. Therefore if the actual number has not changed then the risk has decreased.

The following BBC article states the same.. now part of the issue is how crimes are recorded..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7502180.stm

For an interesting analysis of the impact/causes of fear I’d recommend the following scientific article

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1299209/

My personal opinion is that poor/low education standards leads to fear. The reason I am a Humanist is that all religions I investigated basically came down to using fear/reward to control people. Now I chose not to do something because it is wrong, not because I fear what will happen when I die or because I believe I will be rewarded for it, just because it impacts other people unnecessarily negatively.

Als0 I can recommend the following UK Government analysis of Education

Historical Educational Statistics

And for your consideration this commentary on the 50% target for Higher Education

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-49841620

Lets be honest – Higher education does not equal University/polytechnic – its definition is education post 18. I have no issue with increasing education post 18, how ever this should not be limited to University/polytechnic, it should include in work training and apprenticeships.

Right I am going off topic – I am following a rabbit down a hole into educational achievements and standards – this is important but not for now.

Now for more ONS goodness -an analysis of student populations

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/articles/howhasthestudentpopulationchanged/2016-09-20

Back on track – welcome to a classic Fear inducing/mass tv/pseudo documentary. Ok you will need a Netflix subscription ..

https://www.netflix.com/watch/81171658?trackId=155573558

It is interesting wrt to fear and the impact of media, and also the use of fear to generate sales.. ok tim to step off this soapbox for a bit