Every two days for the past two years more civilians have died in Iraq than in the July 7 London bombings.

Just yesterday, 31 people lost their lives in several attacks across the country, which included gunmen shooting dead three Sunni Arab members of the team drafting Iraq's new constitution; insurgents slaughtering 10 workers on a bus travelling to a US army base, and gunmen ambushing a police vehicle in northern Mosul, killing two.

Such incidents are so common they merit little attention in the world's press.

In Baghdad, life has become a daily calculation of the best road routes or travel times to try to ensure survival. They know that it is in the early morning or evening that the dark clouds of smoke that mark another bombing are most commonly seen. The appearance of a military convoy brings traffic screeching to a halt in case a car is considered a potential threat and shot at.

Trips near government offices or police stations are avoided, the towering concrete blast walls that surround them testament to the lethal threat passing nearby can pose.

Many parents keep their children indoors for safety. It is rare to see the traditional game of tuki, an Arab version of hopscotch, on the streets. Men are now the majority at the local markets as they insist their wives stay away in case they are targeted by bombers.

The amazing realisation is that somehow normal life continues. Shops open, people go to work. Even the Crazy Frog mobile phone ring tone has become the latest fad in Baghdad.

But conversation in the city is dominated by the bombs left in cars near markets, the drive-by shootings, the kidnappings or even the water melon seller with the poisoned produce to be given for free to passing policemen.

And then there are the suicide bombs - around 130 of them across Iraq in the first six months of this year alone - fuelled by a seemingly endless procession of young men, drawn from countries such as Saudi Arabia, Yemen or Syria.

Parents are alarmed not only for the children's safety but the mental scars the violence will leave.

An English teacher, Ahmad Ali, said he had watched his two children playing in the garden, chasing each other between the gardenias.

"You die," he said his four-year-daughter shouted and her cousin fell over on the grass. "I asked them what game it was. They told me they were playing American soldiers fighting criminals. I almost cried that this is their idea of making fun."

In some quarters there is nostalgia for the old regime of Saddam Hussein.

"Under the tyrant at least I felt safe to walk or drive," Munther, a 22-year-old car seller, said. "There is no comparison between life under Saddam and now. Now I never feel safe."

A year ago there was hope that things would be better after the handover of sovereignty to the Iraqis. Then people clung to the belief that January's elections would mark the beginning of the end of insurgency.

This summer they thought a new government would make the army stronger and return life to normal. In the past six weeks there has just been despair. People are at breaking point. Doctors report a growing number of cases of mental illness.

With limited medicines and little belief in the benefits of counselling, electro-convulsive therapy is the favoured treatment. At Ibn al-Rushud psychiatric hospital they have 74 beds and are receiving 250 patients a day.

"People are buckling under the anxieties of war and fear," a doctor said.

"Every human has their limit and of course many people have reached it."