Babylon Health has analysed over 5 million real-time tweets over a two-week period, including every UK county and the UK’s 100 most populated cities, to find out where people are most likely to tweet about stress, frustration and anxiety.
Top 10 most stressed London Boroughs
With 11.25% of tweets classified as stressed, people in Barking and Dagenham are more ‘stressed’ than in any other London borough.
Barking and Dagenham – 11.25%
Croydon – 10.33%
Harrow – 9.66%
Islington – 9.64%
Richmond upon Thames – 9.63%
Kingston upon Thames – 9.63%
Enfield – 9.56%
Brent – 9.48%
Barnet – 9.38%
Sutton – 9.23%
The tool TensiStrength was used to estimate the stress levels in these tweets, by analysing them on a scale of -1 (no stress) to -5 (very highly stressed), based on the classification of words related to stress, frustration, anxiety, anger and negativity.
The final rankings are based on the locations with the highest proportion of tweets that are classified as ‘moderately stressed’ or higher (-3 to -5 on the TensiStrength scale).
Why is the UK stressed?
A 2018 study by YouGov, in association with Mental Health Foundation, revealed that in the past year, 74% of people have felt so stressed they have been overwhelmed or unable to cope. In the same study, 36% of all adults who reported stress cited either their own or a friend/relative’s long-term health condition as a factor. Followed by 22% of people citing debt as a stressor.
Similarly, HSE’s recent study revealed that 595,000 workers suffered from work-related stress, depression or anxiety (new or long-standing) in 2017/18, resulting in 15.4 million working days lost.
