Rumdes Blog

A poll conducted by the Gallup Healthways showed that Americans became increasingly stressed out and experienced worsened mental health due to the globally- experienced financial crisis.

The survey conducted on 355,334 people is believed to be the largest, longest, and most thorough poll that shows emotional well-being shifts with economic changes.

It produced a so-called Emotional Health Index (EHI), a measure that weighs negatives such as depression, worry and stresses against the positive feelings a person experienced the day before the survey.

According to David Baron, chairman of the psychiatry department at Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia, the poll findings are no surprise to anyone on the frontlines of mental health care.

“This recession has touched people in virtually every walk of life:’ Baron stressed.

The survey also showed that those 30 to 55 years old, prime earning years, may be suffering most from the bad economic news.

“And these are also prime-time decades for raising families. But that’s getting harder in such a tough economic climate,” said Julie Moghal, a psychologist based at Children’s Hospital in Orange, California.

“So many parents are feeling guilty and upset about how to handle economic reverses with children.” Moghal added.

Larry Berman, executive director of the American Association of Suicidology emphasized on the need for supportive friends in times of financial crisis.

Berman explained that a lack of supportive relationships is tied to higher suicide rates among the unemployed.

“When someone is in despair of economic problems, give them support and see that they get help for mental health problems. This is our time to be our brother’s keeper” Berman advised.

When caught in a traffic jam, don’t fume. Lest you end up with a heart attack.

A study presented in the recent American Heart Association’s 49th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention in Palm Harbor, Florida, has shown that people who have had a heart attack are likely to report having been in traffic shortly before their symptoms began.

Based on a German study of patients who had a heart attack, researchers found a three-fold risk of developing a heart attack for victims, male or female, who have been in traffic within an hour of the onset of their heart attack. Women had a higher five-fold risk of falling victim to this traffic ”hazard”.

Most of the patients were driving a car, but some were taking public transportation or riding a bicycle. Overall, time spent in any mode of transportation in traffic was associated with a 3.2 times higher risk than time spent away from this trigger. Most susceptible were females, elderly males, patients who were unemployed and those with a history of angina or chest pains previously.

“Driving or riding in heavy traffic pose an additional risk of eliciting a heart attack in persons already at elevated risk:’ said Annette Peters, Ph.D., principal investigator of the study.”In this study, underlying vulnerable coronary artery disease increased the risk of having a heart attack after driving in traffic:’ added Dr. Peters, who is also the head of the research unit at the Institute of Epidemiology, Helmholtz Zentrum in Munich, Germany Dr. Peters also explained that, “one potential factor could be the exhaust and air pollution coming from other cars but we can’t exclude the synergy between stress and air pollution that could tip the balance:’ she said.

Other previous researches have shown that those engaging in strenuous activity such as playing soccer or squash or performing heavy work such as painting overhead or snow shoveling had five to six times the risk of heart attack in the subsequent hours after the activity.

Based on this study, about 8 percent of the heart attacks could have been triggered by the traffic. “It’s just one of the factors, but it’s not a negligible number,” said Dr. Peters.