The truth is our social disorder ... creates a very stressful environment.

Getting kids ready for school should be something they teach you in college, it is no easier than astro-physics.

Having accomplished this, we sit in traffic watching the clock fearful of 'missing the bell'. As I edge around the Barbican roundabout, I sense a car looming to my right. I know his evil intension. He makes his move and tries to cut in, I swear, accelerate and drive like I'm at an amusement park in my efforts not to let him in.

In the event the car gets in, I spend the next 10 minutes fuming and wondering what is lacking in morals of this person and generally despising him. Life in Jamaica is stressful.

"They say 'Jamaica No Problem', but that just isn't true!" an exasperated friend of mine married to a Jamaican was commenting on her expectation of a laid-back 'irie' place. What she has found is not just fun in the sun, but a hard-core rat race! The truth is our social disorder, and sense of every man for himself, creates a very stressful environment.

External factors

Some stress is inevitable. We all face it, but environment can tip the scale from bearable to unbearable.

Our economic indicators suggest limited economic growth, which in reality feels a bit like decline and, regardless of your economic bracket, that is stressful.

Money is always a major contributor of stress. Our crime rate has people fearful for their lives each day. People living in the inner city live in a war zone and people uptown live feel like a target.

Our government is inefficient - walk into the tax office and take at the look at the line and see if it does not stress you out. And finally it is hot; there isn't a Jamaican who does not truly know the meaning of the phrase 'hot and bothered'!

Apart from the external factors, we make it stressful. We are aggressive and never passive. Willing to battle bumpers for a point, and not able to let it go when the creep affronts our civil rights.

Talking with a counsellor recently, she tells me that many Jamaicans are not equipped with the proper skills of communication. They simply are unable to express the things that are bothering them and, therefore, do not work them through.

As result, what is often seen is a direct physical manifestation of their stress. A pain in the head, the heart, 'pressure', bellyache, you name it, doctors increasingly see patients who have no physical problem despite feeling symptoms. The physical problem is stress!

While some stress-related illnesses may well be psychosomatic, the fact is there is increasing evidence of stress as a factor in illnesses such as cancer, obesity, rheumatoid arthritis, high blood pressure, migraine, and even the common cold.

Stress management

We all know that the distraction of stress makes us more prone to accidents. Certainly, the times I have hit my car that is the cause. In fact, it has been estimated that in the United States, 90 per cent of doctors' visits are due to health problems influenced at least in part by stress.

Many countries have studied the effects of stress on the productivity in the workplace, the number of sick days taken for stress-related illness and as a result have implemented stress management plans and guides for employers as well as support for employees. Our government needs to appreciate that stress is at crisis levels in Jamaica and is something that needs to be addressed.

We need order restored, and some economic growth that will only come with the eradication of corruption because, quite simply, the stress is killing us!!

Tara Clivio is a freelance journalist.