‘It feels like I’m on a train track and there’s something coming soon,’ said a loved one to me recently. It’s a great description of anxiety: that sense of fear that the future holds something terrible; the constant worry that we’re going to meet something we cannot manage; dread about what will happen next. And anxiety is something ever more of us are struggling with. According to some statistics, there are eight million sufferers in the UK, with 60 per cent of us showing sign of some symptoms. It makes worrying reading, but it’s not that surprising. Untreated stress is one of the main causes of anxiety, and what have the past few years been if not stressful? Add to that the world we live in, and our ever-more hectic lives, and you have the perfect recipe for anxiety. It’s the theme of the Mental Health Foundation’s Mental Health Week this year (15–21 May), and we wanted to make it a thread running through this issue, too.