Trader Samir Mukherjee (name changed) was off to Puri with his family for a holiday. As his wife and kids waited on the train at Howrah station, he stood smoking on the platform.

The train left at the scheduled time, but Mukherjee was not on it. He was on his way back home in a taxi. “I suddenly felt that I had forgotten to lock the main gate. But on reaching home, I found the door locked. To be doubly sure, I opened the door and locked it again,” he recounted.

Mukherjee rushed back to the station in the same taxi, but the train had left by then. He took a series of passenger trains and reached Puri the next afternoon. His wife and children were waiting for him on the platform.

“This is a case of anxiety disorder, which causes a person to lose self-confidence,” said general secretary of Indian Psychiatric Society and secretary general of Saarc Psychiatric Federation Ranadip Ghosh Roy, who treated Mukherjee. “This and other mental disorders are on the rise due to increase in stress level and lifestyle shifts,” the psychiatrist added.

According to doctors, about 17 per cent of the city’s population suffer from stress-related mental disorders. “In most cases, those suffering from the disorders do not come for treatment,” said Ghosh Roy.

Depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, attention deficit disorder and panic are some of the common problems associated with anxiety disorder. “With increase in competition in every sphere of life, people are failing to cope with pressure. Anxiety disorder is a manifestation of this inability,” stated clinical psychologist of Institute of Child Health, Calcutta, Tapasi Mitra. “Anxiety disorder is common among working women. Children of anxiety-prone mothers inherit the disorder in the womb.”

Anxiety disorder is behind lack of concentration, hyperactivity and fluctuating attention among children.

A key to anxiety disorder, doctors have found, is the inability to share one’s problems with others. Acute anxiety disorder can lead to hallucination and other complications.

Hectic schedules and long working hours are also leading to other problems, such as building sickness syndrome. “We get many complaints from the BPO sector, where employees feel pressured for no apparent reason,” explained Kaushik Majumdar, specialist in stroke and memory disorders at National Neurosciences Centre, Calcutta.