While designing The Antidote, one question was at the back of my mind the whole time: we're trying to be an antidote - but to what, exactly? Those of us who live in the city know that life is getting more stressful, but I thought it would be worth trying to understand how, so we can better empathise with the people seeking recovery. I figured it would be helpful for venues as well, to better understand their customers.
The main insight I found wasn’t that people in the city are inherently more stressed than people in regional and rural areas - there's plenty of stress all over. It’s more that we’re exposed to different kinds of stress and - more relevantly - we don’t give ourselves time and space to recover.
So here are the main causes I’ve found. Sources are linked at the bottom of this post, if you want to dig deeper.
- Work has become an important source of sustained pressure
The new 2026 Australian Worker Exposure Survey conducted by Safe Work Australia is particularly revealing. They surveyed 6,617 Australian workers about workplace hazards, and found 37.3% of workers experience tight deadlines or pressure either 'often" or "all the time". Those are very high numbers! And among sectors heavily concentrated in cities, it is even higher: 47.2% in financial and insurance services and 46.3% in professional, scientific and technical services.
They identified the main causes as follows (and I can personally attest to experiencing all of these at some point): poor support, inadequate recognition, poor organisational change, remote/isolated work, and poor workplace relationships causing psychological harm.
- Financial stress has very clearly increased
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) conducted research showing that every single measured indicator of financial stress has increased since 2021. These include the inability to pay utility bills, inability to pay rent/mortgage, going without meals (😳), borrowing from friends/family and seeking welfare assistance. Earnings have simply not kept pace with large increases in housing and other costs.
- Housing is an increasingly significant pressure, particularly in cities
This is perhaps the clearest urban-specific trend. Enough has been written about rising prices in the city, I won’t repeat it here. But it’s worth noting that housing matters psychologically as well as financially, because home is traditionally one of the places where people might hope to recover from stress caused elsewhere.
- Time poverty: City dwellers genuinely feel rushed
The ABS conducted a ‘Time use’ survey in 2024, and found the following:
- 36% of women and 30% of men say they always or often feel rushed or pressed for time.
- People working from home actually spent about an hour more on unpaid work during their workday than people working outside the home.
- Women averaged 4h 53m of unpaid work per day, versus 3h 52m for men
It made me wonder - as more work eats into our leisure time, should we do more to ringfence and protect it? Sometimes I feel like recovery time is just what happens to be left over when all the work is done…if any is left over at all.
- Commuting consumes recovery time
This one might not be changing much over time - in fact I’d say it’s probably been relieved somewhat by the increase in people working from home. But it remains a bigger problem in the city than outside, especially for people commuting by car. A study of workers in south-west Sydney found 26.1% of car commuters described their commute as stressful, versus 10.3% using other methods.
- Social connection has deteriorated substantially
This is one of the more interesting findings. Some recent analysis reports that people have fewer friends and socialise less frequently than in 2001 - the proportion meeting friends or relatives several times a week or more has fallen from roughly 32% to 20%. And recent research conducted by the University of Sydney found that 51% of people living in Australia report some form of social disconnection; either loneliness, social isolation, or both. 51%!
I used to work in digital agencies where I made many great friends over the years, many of whom I’m still very close with. While I get the appeal of working from home (and personally, I love it) I do feel sad that younger folks may be denied the same opportunities to build such strong connections with their colleagues.
That’s a lot to digest. If you’re experiencing stress in the city, hopefully isolating the things that are causing the stress can help you come up with a plan of action. Left unchecked it’s unlikely to fix itself.
Sources
National Study of Mental Health and Wellbeing, 2020-2022 | Australian Bureau of Statistics
AIHW - Financial Stress and Mental Health
Latest HILDA findings on housing and financial pressure
ABS – How Australians use their time 2024
Time Spent Commuting to Work and Mental Health – longitudinal HILDA study
ScienceDirect: Travel to work and self-reported stress