Word: distressfully
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...just released in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. If the data reveal anything, it's that while the Rust Belt and Sun Belt may have been the geographic definers of their day, in the current era of economic crisis, it's the Gloom Belt that matters more. Financial distress, after all, usually leads to emotional distress, and epidemiologists are working to identify which populations are hardest hit. (See 50 authentic American experiences...
...What the researchers were looking for was what they called frequent mental distress (FMD), which they defined as 14 or more bad days out of 30. And while the questions they asked were broad, when you ask them nearly 2½ million times, some patterns start to emerge. Between 1993 and 2001, 9% of Americans were found to be suffering from FMD; by 2006, that number had nosed up to 10.2%. The saddest state was Kentucky, with a steady 14.4% of residents reporting FMD in both surveys. West Virginia was next. Its score of 9.6% in the first sample soared...
...five (Colorado, Minnesota, North Dakota, Texas and Iowa) improved. Even then, the downtick in FMD was less than 1%. And while it's true that even in a state like Kentucky, a 14.4% score means 85.6% did not suffer from FMD, plenty of people may still be experiencing mental distress regularly, just not as frequently as 14 days per month. (See pictures of Americans in their homes...
...ethnic group; the least stressed were Asians and Pacific Islanders. Of all the drivers of FMD, unemployment and other economic woes are the most powerful - hence lower-income Native Americans and higher-income Asians wound up on opposite ends of the FMD scale. Similarly, while there is legitimate economic distress among seniors living on fixed or declining incomes, it's students and recent grads who face the longest haul in economically unstable conditions. And the worst might be yet to come...
...Frequent mental distress has probably increased since 2006," says Zack, "though whether the recent worsening of the economy will affect all areas equally is uncertain...