SO NOW there many teachers suffering from “stress” and in need of counselling and apparently they are not alone.

There are few situations when the modern answer is not counselling, from children who have accidents, married couples who have problems and soldiers who have come home after service abroad. How on earth did the older generation, in which I am now proud to be counted, cope all those years ago?

Stress was sleeping under the bed or in a shelter in the garden in all weathers with bombs falling around your home, or hiding in a London Underground shelter, not knowing whether your house would be standing the next day.

It was doing a 16-hour day to help farmers to produce enough food for the country to survive. It was dreading the telegraph boy bringing news of a dear one’s death.

And for brave men it was living from day to day never knowing when your last hour would come – and afterwards, building and repairing the dreadful damage left by the bombing and starting anew with no such thing as counselling. What a nation of wimps we have become.

Heather Causnett, Escrick Park Gardens, Escrick, York.