Stress

Starbucks offers consumers up to 87,000 drink combinations. Comcast, the nation's largest cable provider, offers up to 1,000 channels. Sirius offers 140 different satellite radio stations for your listening pleasure. Americans have come to expect a wide array of choices, and most companies, be they car companies, clothiers or coffee shops, have been more than willing to pony up. But more choices do not always equate to happier consumers.

Whether it turns out that he died of heart disease, a cocktail of potent prescription drugs or just years of indulgence and excess, one verdict is inescapable: What really killed Michael Jackson was an overdose of showbiz values. Like so many child stars before him, from Judy Garland and Sammy Davis Jr. to Tatum O'Neal and River Phoenix and Lindsay Lohan, Jackson never found himself a home in the real world.

Preschool teachers who are highly stressed because of classroom conditions, depression or other factors are far more likely than their colleagues to recommend expulsion for children with behavioral problems, according to a study released Thursday. Conducted by Yale University's Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy, the study found that of teachers who reported high job stress, 14.3% also reported one or more expulsions in the last year, while 4.

The days stretch 15, 18, 20 hours and the stops blur in a whirl of doughnuts and hotel ballrooms: California at 6 a.m., New Mexico at noon, wheels down in Boise, Idaho, at midnight. Listening to -- or giving -- the same stump speech five times a day. Making the same small talk with voters. Scratchy hotel sheets. Scratchier voices. The cold that passes from candidate to staff to reporters and back again. The presidential campaign trail has a culture and a grueling rhythm all its own.

For thousands of years, humans have sipped, swallowed and chewed endless remedies to soothe frayed nerves: fermented ales in medieval Europe, coca tea and tobacco in the ancient Americas, and kava kava concoctions in the South Pacific, to name a few. For the last century or so, with varied success, researchers have tried to perfect the packaging of anxiety relief into a simple little pill. In the 1800s in the U.S.

"Life Is Wonderfull" is the boast from Korea Telecom that shimmers from the billboard-size TV screens that loom over downtown Seoul, but you might get an argument at street level about the accuracy of the company's English slogan. Many South Koreans see their lives as well short of wonderful. Workers put in the longest hours in any free-market economy. Students are pushed to study to exhaustion.

It happened with cigarettes. It happened with red meat. And carbs. And SUVs. And now it's happening with e-mail. The preferred communication channel of millions of Americans is no longer cool. According to a growing number of academics, "technologists" and psychologists, our dependence on e-mail -- the need to attend to a constantly beeping in-box -- is creating anxiety in the workplace, adversely affecting the ability to focus, diminishing productivity and threatening family bonds.

Robert Fellman can see it on his employees' faces: the fear, stress and discomfort that come from a difficult, even scary, economic climate. "There's panic in their eyes," said Fellman, director of PC Professor, a computer training company with offices in Boca Raton and West Palm Beach, Fla. He also hears it when they reassure him that they'll do whatever it takes to keep their jobs: "If there's anything you need done, I'll accept the criticism, just let me know" is what he hears from staffers.

A Porter Ranch man who murdered his family and killed himself last weekend as he faced financial ruin is the latest and most extreme case of a wave of distress washing over the American psyche. Karthik Rajaram, an unemployed financial advisor, left a suicide note saying that his financial state left him few options but to kill his wife, three children and mother-in-law. Los Angeles Deputy Police Chief Michel Moore described Rajaram, 45, as a man stuck in a rabbit hole of despair.