Hi Greg,

How frightening. My ex-husband began having extreme panic attacks. He always was a nervous person as long as I have known him. One day my youngest son, Tim, who is a paramedic went to vist him and found him nude with a gun to his head. He was able to talk him out of suicide and took him to a mental health hospital where he remained in lock down for two days.

A few years later, he was changed to a different health insurance and dropped his conseling and drug therapy. The day my middle son arrived home from his tour of duty in Iraq, his father called him while he was enroute and he again rushed him to the hospital for another lock down.

My ex-husband is not a hunter, but likes to target shoot to relieve stress. My youngest son took all the guns to my house and locked them up.

The world we live in has a whole different type of stress than a hundred years ago. Most of the stress required manual labor which allowed the body to perspire out of their system some of the bad chemicals. The work week was 40 hours, mothers were home with the children, dads could kick up their feet for a few hours and weekends were family time. Now due to health care costs, those who work are stuck behind computers working 60 to 70 hour work hours a week, much of it on weekends so employers won't have to pay health benefits. The average worker has to sit most of his working hours and as the years go by their girth increases.

Americans may live in the most productive society, but is the chronic stress worth the bucks?

Vicky