Professor Frances Kay
Director and CEO, Hunter Medical Research Institute
Frances is a registered psychologist and mental health researcher who leads HMRI’s work to improve health outcomes across the Hunter and New England.
There’s a particular kind of stress that doesn’t announce itself, and right people are feeling it right across the Hunter and New England. It’s the stress of absorbing one cost shock after another and wondering how much longer the budget will hold.
You feel it at the petrol bowser as fuel creeps closer to three dollars a litre, and in the supermarket while you do quick maths in your head. You feel it when the tradie quotes the job and the price is higher than you expected, and right through the system, where diesel and fertiliser costs are strangling margins and flowing through to what you pay.
But the cost of global unrest and the ongoing conflict in Iran in particular isn’t only measured in dollars. The human toll plays out on our screens every night and it’s impossible to ignore. For those in our region with personal ties to the countries involved, it’s close to home. For everyone else, there’s a tension that builds over time and adds to the weight people are already carrying.
The economic worry runs deeper than today’s petrol price, with real anxiety about fuel supply, inflation staying higher for longer, and interest rates tipped to rise again just when people thought they might catch a breath.
There’s also a frustration that decisions get made far from here while regional communities are left to absorb the consequences.
Hunter Medical Research Institute (HMRI) Director and CEO, Professor Frances Kay is a registered psychologist and researcher in mental health. She says one thing stands out consistently in her research into how people cope under sustained pressure.
“It’s almost never one big thing that brings someone undone, but the slow accumulation of cost and worry that gradually erodes your reserves until you haven’t been to the GP, you’re not sleeping properly, and you can’t remember the last time you felt genuinely ahead of things”
“I’ll be honest, I recognise this feeling in myself. There are moments lately where I can feel that edge of overwhelm creeping in. Not because of one big thing, but because of the accumulation of everything. And whilst I’m OK, and I have the support and perspective to manage it, it’s not a state that’s easy or sustainable to sit in for long”
“That’s what concerns me most, the normalisation of running close to empty. I know I’m not alone because at HMRI, we’ve been asking people.”
Health Pulse is HMRI’s way of putting community voices at the centre of our research, and access to care comes through consistently as a real challenge across our region. That’s shaping where HMRI directs its research effort and influence.
So what can we do? Here are a few things the evidence genuinely supports, because this isn’t just wellness bingo.
Sleep, movement and regular meals are often the first things to slip when life becomes busy or expensive, and under pressure they can start to feel trivial. They’re not. These are the systems that regulate mood, energy and decision making. Even keeping a small version of them in place is one of the most effective ways to stabilise yourself when everything else feels uncertain.
Pressure tends to make people pull inward and try to manage things quietly on their own, but connection is one of the most powerful buffers against stress that we have available to us. It doesn’t need to be a formal conversation or a big disclosure, because a coffee, a walk or a phone call to someone who understands can make a genuine difference.
There’s a strong tendency in communities like ours, where people are proud and capable and don’t want to make a fuss, to wait until things are bad before doing something about them. A short telehealth call, a check-in with your GP or a chat with a community health worker can stop smaller issues from becoming more serious ones.
Changes in sleep, mood, energy or concentration are usually the first signs that pressure is building beyond what you’re managing well. Noticing these signals early and taking them seriously allows you to respond before things become much harder to turn around.
When pressure comes from everywhere (global conflict, fuel prices, interest rates) it’s easy to feel like nothing you do matters. Psychologists call this learned helplessness: things feel so big that we stop doing the small, everyday actions that keep us steady. Keeping a routine, reaching out to someone, making one practical decision at a time, these are ways of staying anchored in what you can influence, and that’s one of the most protective things you can do for your mental health.
When pressure is constant, our bodies can get stuck in a low-level fight-or-flight state, always alert, never quite settling. The stress response still needs somewhere to go, even when the external problems aren’t resolved. A brisk walk, a good laugh, a cry, or losing yourself in a movie aren’t indulgences, they help your body process and clear the hormonal build-up that stress creates.
The goal isn’t to eliminate pressure, it’s to manage it in ways that protect our wellbeing, so that when things ease, and they will, we’re still standing. We can’t set the oil price from Newcastle, Muswellbrook or Tamworth nor can we resolve conflict on the other side of the world, but we can decide how we respond to the pressure it creates here. This region has come through hard times before because people showed up for each other. That’s still the move.
