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With new surveys showing alarming rates of anxiety, it’s a wonder we haven’t all crawled under weighted blankets.

A recent poll of 1,500 Canadians found 41 per cent of those surveyed identified themselves as “someone who struggles with anxiety.” A third said they had been formally diagnosed with anxiety. A similar proportion had been prescribed antidepressants.

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Last week, a study suggested the election of Donald Trump left so many young people so psychologically traumatized, one-quarter of American college students are at risk of PTSD. “Although U.S. presidential elections occur every four years,” the authors wrote in the Journal of American College Health, “the 2016 election was perhaps the most polarizing and emotionally evocative political event for young people in recent history.”

But have rates of distress and anxiety really changed dramatically in the past years? Is this an unusually anxiety-provoking time, or have we become intolerant of normal bouts of misery, of anything that isn’t happy and positive? And why, if we’re awash in antidepressants, aren’t we less neurotic?