The treadmill syndrome

Working as a counselling psychologist in primary care, I have noticed over the years an increasing number of middle-aged clients presenting with stress or depression or both with no specific life event as a precipitator. GPs may describe this as an endogenous depression, but I feel that it is a reactive depression to contemporary lifestyle. You may consider lifestyle to be a question of personal choice. But when listening to a person reviewing his or her daily living, it becomes clear that these lifestyles are so self-perpetuating that it is no wonder an individual feels out of control. I have called this the treadmill syndrome, and in this article I will try to elaborate on what seems to me to be an increasingly common phenomenon.

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