New Year New Start

2010 and an observation

After a well deserved break I returned back to the office seeing patients and working on Healthy Audio Limited projects in mid January. This is the first opportunity I have had to say Happy New Year, although belated no lesser meant than if said on the 1st of the month.

I am amazed at how quickly time passes, February in just couple of days. There is so much to do, patients to help, planning and development and lots more besides.

I do hope that we don’t talk ourselves into more economic decline, though the US economic figures released yesterday show growth, the UK certainly has some way to go at a mere 0.01% growth.

I am puzzled how, in the UK at least, we have to have two consecutive quarters of economic decline to say we are in recession, and yet only one quarter to say we have come out of it! I am sure there are greater brains than mine which will have an official reason (whether it will hold logic though that is another thing) for this but I am yet to learn it.

As a therapist however, I and many therapists like me are at the ‘coal face’ working with the human cost of recession and economic decline. It is not only the economy a recession breaks, but also people, families and societies.

Economists speak of possibly 3 million unemployed in the UK in 2010, it is a frightening number, but all the more frightening when we remember that figure represents individuals. Lost jobs, lost homes, dreams, relationships.

That is what I see in my working day, and the ill health which these bring, the higher stress and anxiety, the drops in confidence and self esteem, the fear and worry in peoples eyes, looking, searching for solutions to problems not of their own making.

The anger aimed at greedy bankers and uncaring and allegedly dishonest politicians many of whom in the UK at least are simply waiting for their pay off when they leave office, leaving the whole sorry mess behind for others to clear up.

There is an injustice somehow to a recession, the innocent and hard working individuals and families paying the price for the recklessness of those who should know better, those in trusted positions having betrayed that trust of the people.

While the bankers are out of voters reach, politicians are not, and with a general election due in the coming months, it is any ones guess what the outcome will be. But I suspect the long memories of the millions of economic victims will play a key role in their decision making at polling booth. I know from the patients I work with, they are itching to exercise their right to be heard.

Whatever 2009 brought to your life, I do hope 2010 brings you the best of your dreams and aspirations, and that things get better for us all.