Stress

In industries where pink slips are being passed out with abandon, the still-employed survivors are getting pretty bummed out. Even Christopher Ruhm, an economist known for arguing that recessions are good for physical health, draws the line at hard times being good for mental health. "I'm not claiming that people are mentally healthier during bad times," says Ruhm, professor of economics at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Hard times are especially hard on pregnant women. Miscarriages go up, as do premature births. The result: fewer baby boys. Economist Ralph Catalano, professor at the School of Public Health of UC Berkeley, showed it for the first time in a 2003 paper in the journal Human Reproduction. Researchers have known, based on studies going back to the 1970s, that war and environmental disasters can affect the sex ratio, which normally sees to it that about half the babies born are boys and half girls.

As if there wasn't enough free-floating anxiety these days, along comes a Forbes.com study measuring the stress levels in the largest U.S. metro areas and putting Los Angeles in fourth place. To come up with the list, Forbes factored in housing affordability, unemployment rates, the price of gasoline, air quality, the number of sunny days annually and population density. The top spot went to Chicago, followed by New York and Detroit. San Francisco and San Diego took fifth and sixth places, respectively.

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.

Psychological counseling, muscle relaxation and other strategies for reducing stress in breast cancer patients can cut their risk of death from the disease by more than half, according to a study published online Monday in the journal Cancer. The study also found that psychological interventions reduced the risk that tumors would come back by 45%. Even when tumors returned, patients who received the counseling had six more cancer-free months compared with those who did not.

Stocks are falling. Companies are handing out pink slips. Home values are collapsing. Financial icons are folding. And Americans' stress is rising. The 2008 Stress in America survey, conducted by the American Psychological Assn. and released in October, found that stress levels have increased significantly over the last two years, particularly in the last six months. Money and the economy top the list of concerns.

While not every stress reduction technique suits everyone, any incremental change -- a little more exercise, a little more sleep, a little deep breathing and a few more nights out with friends -- will help. -- Get moving Evolution has conditioned us to respond to stress as a physical threat, which is why our bodies produce hormones that prepare us to flee from trouble or fight back physically.

IF you're reeling from job stress, take heart. A new study has found that weekly one-hour stress-management sessions at lunchtime can promote cardiovascular health and maybe help stop that eye from twitching.

When life gets tough, the stressed often get hungry. Exactly how many people experience stress-related eating isn't known since there are no national surveys to measure it. But there's growing scientific interest in the topic. "Fight or flight is the normal response to stress," says Tatjana van Strien, professor of psychology at Radboud University in the Netherlands. "All the blood goes to the muscles so that you're ready for action and not for eating....