The Age of Anxiety

Pete Lunn from the ESRI was on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme this morning with Peter Kellner from YouGov discussing the impact of consumer confidence on the real economy (if you listen to it on the BBC website then fast forward to 2:55 as it's the last item on the show).

Pete made the point that it isn't just the 'quantity' of uncertainty that is adversely affecting consumer confidence right now, it's the 'quality' as well (my distinction, not his). In other words, it's one thing to worry about something directly affecting your life like a job promotion, but qualitatively something else to worry about a thing you cannot control like the prospects of a global recession. And right now we live in an age of anxiety. Make that increasing anxiety.

Kellner, on the other hand, leans more towards the 'conditions determine consciousness' school of explanation. He argues that it is the trend in house prices - and the poor prospects for same in the UK - that are the source of the emotional anxiety affecting British consumers right now.

However, the always interesting Chris Dillow has an entirely different take on the 'confidence drives the economy' issue. He argues that it is the sentiment of senior business leaders that drives the economic cycle in the short run - not consumer sentiment.  His proof? Economists have a better record of forecasting consumer spending growth than they do investment growth - suggesting that the latter is subject to more extreme and therefore more 'emotional' factors than generally realised.

Which does raise an interesting question. Would it be more useful to track the emotional well-being of business leaders rather than the general public as a guide to our economic prospects?

Mindfulness, meditation and mental health

Some researchers have advocated the use of mindfulness based techniques to deal with affective disorders, for example there is an RCT that finds it effective against depression for women with fibromyalgia and also evidence of how meditation can help anxiety, stress or agoraphobia.
Closer to home, the Northern Ireland Health Service has brought in a Buddhist monk to provide mindfulness based "happiness classes". I don't know how accurate a description that is but Sammy Wilson MP is not a happy bunny.

Substance P at the nexus of mind and body in chronic inflammation and affective disorders

A potentially very interesting serum marker: For decades, research has demonstrated that chronic diseases characterized by dysregulation of inflammation are particularly susceptible to exacerbation by stress and emotion. In recent years, substance P has been implicated in both the pathophysiology of inflammatory disease and the pathophysiology of depression and anxiety by 2 parallel fields of study. This review integrates the literature from these 2 parallel fields and examines the possibility that substance P dysregulation may be a point of convergence underlying the overlap of chronic inflammatory disease and mood and anxiety disorders.

Abstract, Full

BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID, IF YOU LEARNED TO:

STUDY ON FEAR RESPONSES SUGGESTS NEW UNDERSTANDING OF ANXIETY DISORDERS

A new study on rats has identified a part of the brain's cortex that controls learned but not innate fear responses.The results suggest that hyperactivity in a region of the prefrontal cortex might contribute to disorders of learned fear in humans, such as post-traumatic stress disorder and other anxiety disorders, say authors Kevin A. Corcoran, PhD, and Gregory Quirk, PhD, of the Ponce School of Medicine in Puerto Rico. Their report appears in the January 24 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.

The above got me thinking:in economics we think of discounting as that which mediates present and future consumption.Could it be fear/anxiety? If people are anxious about the (unknown) future then they may appear to economists as high-discount types. But there is a big difference,for example there are no drugs for having a high discount rate. So should would-be school drop-outs be put on Valium or given a few sessions of CBT ?