Local anxiety levels among lowest in UK

A study tracking changing wellbeing trends has ranked Fermanagh and Omagh as the tenth ‘least anxious’ area in the UK.

The analysis, which looked at data from 354 districts across the North, England, Scotland and Wales, suggested local anxiety levels are roughly 27 per-cent lower than the UK average.

In fact, not only do the figures show our rural homeland to be relatively free from anxiety, but they also indicate that people here have a higher degree of ‘life satisfaction’ than the national norm.

In neighbouring Mid Ulster, the picture was more serene yet, with people in the east of the county named the second least anxious population out of the 354 surveyed.

When it came to life satisfaction, our easterly neighbours got a score of over seven per-cent in excess of the UK average.

However, these two sets of data did not represent a rule that went unbroken across the county.

Tyrone’s positive trend was bucked when Derry City and Strabane received an anxiety score of almost seven per-cent below the UK average, and a life satisfaction rating that fell nearly two per-cent beneath the norm.

Though it is not clear how exactly the researchers defined ‘anxious’, their analysis was based on personal wellbeing estimates published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The figures showed the North to be the least anxious of the four regions covered in the research, with an ‘average anxiety score’ of 2.91.

Compare this was the 3.3 out of ten scored by the UK’s most anxious nation, Wales.

England and Scotland also proved more anxiety prone than the North, scoring 3.24 and 3.21, respectively.

The most anxious district here was Antrim and Newtownabbey, with an average anxiety level over seven per-cent above the UK baseline.

However, this still only made the north east block the 86th most anxious area in the UK.

Spelthorne, a local government district with borough status in Surrey, England, was ranked the most anxious area in the UK, with a rating 60 per-cent above average.

The numbers were published by a company called Go Smoke Free.