My name is Andrea de la Flor, I am a 24 year old fourth year Economics student at Simon Fraser University. I am originally from Lima, Peru and have been living in Vancouver for three years now. My professional passion is Economic Development, as I plan in the future to apply my knowledge and experience gained in Canada to develop policies for the economic and social growth of my country, Peru. I am creating this blog to talk and research about a very important component of health, that of mental health, in particular, anxiety disorders. My target audience are college/university students that have a higher level of stress and anxiety due to normal student worries, from exams to personal/relationships, finance, uncertainty of the future and for some, the stress embedded in coming to a new country and having to adapt to it. Being a student, I have gone through many anxiety periods throughout my university years and I know it can get very challenging so I decided to give my target audience not only more reliable information on what anxiety really means and what causes it but also good ways of dealing and coping with it in our daily lifes. Lastly, I would like to provide ways of preventing this type of mental disorders.
As we know, mental health now a days is a big part of our general health, as defined by the World Health Organization, health means not only the absence of disease but a complete state of mental, social and psychological well being. From these blog posts I expect to learn about anxiety disorders, what causes them? What kind of anxiety disorders are we faced with while attending school? How and why some people react differently under the same events and circumstances, is it genetics? Is it related with physical health? Why do some people stress out a lot more than others when writing a final exam or breaking up with a boyfriend/girlfriend or when losing a loved one? What does it depend on? Moreover, I expect to learn how to recognize reliable information since there is a lot out there we infer every day. Finally, I want to learn of ways on how to manage stress and anxiety more efficiently and if there is any way of preventing it to assure ourselves of a long, and well enjoyed life.
To finish this post, I would like to share my main message which is that anxiety disorders are becoming more and more common among students and we not only need to know what causes the different types of disorders and how to treat them, but most importantly, we need to know how to prevent it. We need to be more aware of the importance of mental health to be able to enjoy our life fully.
