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 Health & Beauty | May 2007 
It's a Stressful World
 Will Lester - Sapa-AP
| | The people in Mexico were the least stressed out of the people in eight other countries surveyed. |
Stress - that tense feeling often connected to having too much to do, too many bills to pay and not enough time or money - is a common emotion that knows few borders.
About three-fourths of people in the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, South Korea and the United Kingdom say they experience stress on a daily basis, according to AP-Ipsos polling. Those anxious feelings are even more intense during the holidays.
Spaniards, 61 percent, were not as wound up as those in most other countries polled.
And they could all take a lesson from Mexico, where more than half said they rarely or never experience stress.
But that is certainly not the experience for most people in the 10 countries polled - especially women.
Germans felt stress more intensely than those in other countries polled. People in the US cited financial pressures as the top worry. About half the people in Britain said they frequently or sometimes felt life was beyond their control, the highest level in the 10 countries surveyed.
In most of those countries, men were more likely to say their lives were never out of control.
"The idea that we French lead the good life is totally Utopian," said Pascale Mongay, a counsellor at a private Paris tutoring firm.
The factors that cause stress are on the increase in modern industrial democracies. They include multiple jobs, long commutes and increasingly complex technology.
In the US, Britain and Mexico, finances were cited most frequently as the top source of stress. Jobs were the top source of stress in Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, South Korea and Spain. The French viewed jobs and finances equally as top sources of stress.
In several countries, those who earned the highest incomes said their jobs were the leading source of stress, while those who made the lowest cited finances.
And in many of those countries - like Italy, Germany and France - the word "stress" has such a powerful influence that it has become incorporated into their language.
For the Germans, just over half said they frequently felt stress in their daily lives - the highest stress level in any country polled.
"During the week, I often don't get home until well after dinner time and then my wife expects me to help with the children, then there's dinner to be made and often I bring work home from the office on top of that," said Roland Reifschneider, 33, of Berlin, who works in public relations. "I'd like to have time to go to the gym, but it's impossible."
But Germans were the least likely of any group polled to say they felt that life was beyond their control.
With all this pressure bearing down on them, people find various ways to deal with it. For Mexico City construction worker Javier Juan, one of the reasons he "almost never" experienced stress may be his priorities.
What Juan worried about most is the well-being of his family members, especially his wife and children.
"Their health and how I'm going to obtain money to cure them if they get sick is the biggest worry," Juan said.
UNITED STATES
When the word "stress" was mentioned to Heidi Zabit, from the US state of Connecticut, recently, it seemed to touch a bundle of nerves.
"My life is just so stressful right now I'm exploding all over the place," said Zabit, a paralegal and single mother of three boys.
"Financially, the stresses are putting me under the table. After a full day of work we finish dinner and do homework. By 9pm I'm fried."
People in the US cited financial pressures as the top worry.
"The level of stress in fast-paced technological societies has been accelerating," said Gershen Kaufman, a practising clinical psychologist and professor emeritus at Michigan State University.
"There's an increased emphasis placed on wealth in this country. We're gradually exporting this around the world."
GERMANY
Germans were among the most stressed out people in nine industrial democracies polled by AP-Ipsos, and their jobs were a leading cause.
The poll found that people in Germany said they were under more stress than any other people in the 10 countries surveyed.
When asked, "In general, how often do you experience stress in your daily life?" more than half, or 51 percent of Germans, answered "frequently". In comparison, Mexicans are the least worried, just 15 percent there answered "frequently".
More than a third of Germans - 37 percent - said that jobs are the most stressful part of their lives - a factor likely associated with high unemployment numbers in Germany and people's fear of losing their jobs.
"During the week, I often don't get home until well after dinner time and then my wife expects me to help with the children, then there's dinner to be made and often I bring work home from the office on top of that," said Roland Reifschneider, 33, who works in public relations. "I'd like to have time to go to the gym, but it's just not possible."
Unemployment has been a major concern in the country for a long time and the German economy has only recently begun to emerge from years of sluggish growth. The upturn has finally begun to make itself felt in the labour market.
Even though Germany's unemployment last month fell below 4 million for the first time in more than four years, many Germans still seem worried about their job situation and 9.6% are still looking for work.
BRITAIN
Britons experienced stress about as often as people in other countries surveyed in the AP-Ipsos poll, but ranked about the highest in how frequently stress made them feel life is beyond their control.
Asked how often one gets "the feeling that your life is beyond your control", about 20 percent in Britain answered they "frequently" did, with 31 percent saying they "sometimes" did, according to the poll.
The results could be depressing for the British economy as well.
In the fiscal year 2004-2005, Britons missed an estimated 12,8-million days of work, owing to stress, depression and anxiety, according to the Health and Safety Executive, a British government organisation regulating health and safety in the workplace.
The majority of those polled in all other countries surveyed, answered that they "rarely" or "never" experienced stress that made them feel their life was beyond control.
More than three out of four Britons said they experienced stress "frequently" or "sometimes", an occurrence comparable to the stress levels in most of the other countries.
The high level of stress pervading Britain is getting the attention of the government. The Health and Safety Executive announced a campaign against stress in early 2006 and has been giving one-day workshops and publishing information for employers on how to reduce stress in the workplace.
CANADA
In the AP-Ipsos poll, three out of four Canadians reported they sometimes or frequently experienced stress; six out of 10 said their stress was owed mainly to their jobs or finances.
The figures showed that Canadians reported about the same level of stress as their American neighbours. In both countries, six in 10 reported jobs and finances as the most stressful aspects of their lives.
Dr Mark Berger, an expert in depression, anxiety and stress, blamed such stress levels on a lack of public transportation in suburban Canada and the escalating costs of living in urban Canada that are forcing people into the suburbs.
Suburban Canadians get out of bed ever earlier to beat the traffic to jobs in the city and face a return fight with traffic after work.
"Then they get home later, don't have time to spend with their children and then get to bed later," he said. "In short, they're not getting enough sleep and are stressing out because of the rat race."
More related to the poll's finding of job-related stress, stress expert Dr Doug Saunders pointed to technology as a culprit.
"The notion (was) that technology was going to relieve us and allow us to live more relaxed lives. The impact of technology has turned out to be exactly the opposite," Saunders said.
White-collar workers were expected to do more, faster, and 24-hours a day with their cellphones and wireless computers, he said.
SOUTH KOREA
South Korea has been through societal upheaval because of its fast development, leading to increased stress among its population - with four in five saying they experienced stress on a daily basis, AP-Ipsos polling found.
This starts from a young age, where children spend hours after regular classes in cramming schools to compete on key exams to enter universities, the selection of which can affect their entire lives in terms of future jobs and marriage.
From there, they face rising unemployment because of lack of available jobs, along with rising real estate costs to find a place to live.
South Koreans had the highest numbers of people experiencing stress on a daily basis.
South Korea "has experienced big changes in a short period in terms of politics, economics and society compared to other nations", said Dr Ko Kyoung-bong, a professor of psychiatry at the medical school of Seoul's Yonsei University, adding that this leads to high instances of physical and mental disease.
Ko warned that the problem could affect production and weaken the nation's competitiveness if the stress epidemic wasn't addressed properly by the government.
South Koreans were likely - 33 percent - to name their jobs as the leading source of stress, followed by finances, named by 28 percent.
For some young people, the high pressure starts at school.
Bak Jong-hyun, a 22-year-old university student, said he suffered pressure from classes, exams and other activities.
"I am worried about my future," he said. "I do often get stressed, but not enough to feel that my life is beyond my control."
ITALY
Most Italians complained of stress in their daily lives, according to the poll, and they were most likely to point to their jobs.
Whatever the definition, stress is felt by most people in Italy.
Among those polled, one-third of Italians said work was the most important source of stress, while 20 percent pointed to health concerns and another 19 percent blamed their finances.
"The nervousness of other people bothers me. Stress causes stress," said Susana Rizzato, a 50-year-old clerk at a shop in downtown Rome.
"People are not at all calm and they are always on their cellphones - you're about to close a sale and their phone rings."
"These are little things, but they add up over the day and weigh you down."
Stress on the job cuts across the Italian work force, targeting different groups for different reasons, said Giovanni Maria Pirone, head of the Italian Institute of Social Medicine, a government-sponsored research centre that studies social and work-related health problems.
In the case of factory workers, it is the repetitiveness of the job that is to blame, while for stressed-out managers, "an exasperated competitiveness" is the root of the problem, he noted. However few people in Italy seek out professional help for stress-related problems.
AUSTRALIA
Australia billed itself for decades as "the lucky country," but an AP Ipsos poll found Aussies feel almost as stressed as the people in any of eight other industrial democracies surveyed.
Other recent research about stress levels found that for city dwellers, it's pretty much "No worries".
For farmers and ranchers in the Outback, things were more grim. The AP-Ipsos poll found that 41 percent of Australians surveyed say they experience stress "frequently".
In all, 77 percent of Australians said they were "frequently" or "sometimes" stressed.
After 15 years of uninterrupted national economic growth, it seems many urban Australians do not have much to complain about. Job worries were the top concern (35 percent), but finances were second at 27 percent.
Most Australians live in coastal cities and are relatively secure in a country with a growing economy, strong job market, and comprehensive national health care, social security and pension plans.
For those in the countryside, it's another story.
Australia has been parched in recent months by the worst drought in a century, which has devastated crops and bankrupted many farmers.
Male farm owners and managers commit suicide at about twice the rate of other Australians, according to a recent Beyond Blue report.
SPAIN
Maybe it's the siestas.
The AP-Ipsos poll found that Spaniards said they were less likely to feel stressed out than people in the United States and some other European countries.
The poll found that only 29 percent of Spanish respondents say they frequently experienced stress, a lower number than in any of the other countries except Spanish-influenced Mexico. Sixty-one percent of the respondents in Spain said they felt stress frequently or sometimes, compared with 75 percent of those in American and Germany, 76 percent of those in France and the United Kingdom and 73 percent in Italy.
But the Spanish may be catching up.
Antonio Cano, a professor of psychology at Madrid's Complutense University and president of the Spanish Society for the Study of Anxiety and Stress, said he believes that workplace stress in Spain is comparable to other EU countries.
The AP-Ipsos poll found that 34 percent of Spanish respondents listed their job as the main cause of stress in their lives, more than those who said finances, health or family life. In the US and the UK, more respondents answered that finances were the most important cause.
Spanish workers are more stressed than they were several years ago, Cano said.
"Even though our lives are evolving favourably thanks to economic growth and technological advances, our level of stress is increasing in a parallel manner," Cano said.
Nonetheless, anxiety disorders are slightly less common in Spain than in other EU countries.
MEXICO
"Asi es la vida" - that is life, Mexicans like to say.
The AP-Ipsos poll found people in Mexico were the least stressed out of the people in eight other countries surveyed.
When asked, "In general, how often do you experience stress in your daily life?" just 15% of Mexicans answered "frequently" - a far lower stress level than other countries polled.
And when asked how often they felt their lives were beyond their control, Mexicans were the least likely, at 21 percent, to say "never".
But that's not to say Mexicans don't have worries. Almost four in 10 - 38 percent - cited finances as their biggest source of stress.
Several people interviewed in Mexico City pointed to the economy as the root cause of stress.
The economy may be facing its fastest expansion in six years with 4,8 percent projected growth, but many Mexicans, especially in more rural areas, continue to explore better-paying jobs in the United States. About 50 million Mexicans live in poverty.
Mexicans were also the least likely, at 20 percent, to blame their jobs for their biggest source of stress. Just 12 percent found their family life most to blame for stress.
Javier Juan, 35, a construction worker, said he experiences stress "almost never". The things that do bother him are the well-being of his family members.
In a country with uncertainties, including a passionately contested recent presidential election that led to fist fights, marches and two men claiming victory, stability is valued.
FRANCE
Carefree, loving, ever ready for the joie de vivre are descriptions often applied to the French, but in reality they experience just as much stress as their counterparts in many other industrialised nations.
Aside from challenging the "joy of living" myth, a survey found the French were almost evenly divided on whether they felt their daily lives were beyond their control, ranking their jobs and their financial situations as the most important causes of stress.
Pascale Mongay, a counsellor at a private Paris firm, blamed stress on globalisation, and said that with increased competition from foreign rivals, French employees were under more pressure to perform.
She also pointed at France's 35-hour work week, saying it increased stress in the workplace by forcing employees to do the same amount of work in less time.
Asked how often they experienced stress, 38 percent of the French said frequently.
About 45 percent said they frequently felt their lives were beyond their control compared to 54 percent who responded rarely or never.
The French ranked their jobs, 30 percent, and finances, 30 percent, when asked to choose the main cause of stress in their lives. Health was a factor for 20 percent and family life 13 percent.
Sales of medications have also shot up, with the French among the top consumers of anti-stress drugs. |
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