Living in Seattle is probably stressing you out

If you white-knuckle it across the West Seattle Bridge at
5:30 p.m. you might be stressed out.

As it turns out, you’re probably stressed out if you’re
simply living in Seattle. Sperling’s Best Places
studied 50 major metropolitan areas to determine the most
and least stressful places to live. Bad news Seattle, the
Emerald City cracked the top 10 for stress.

While five of the top ten most tense towns are from
Florida,
including the most stressful city, Tampa, Seattle ranked
ninth. It had a surprisingly high suicide rate and other
high worrisome factors.

The survey looked at (in order of importance,)
unemployment rate, suicide rate, commute time, mental
health, poor rest, alcohol use, violent and property crime
rates, and annual cloudy days.

Commuting, as those who live and work in Seattle know,
contributes to unusually high anxiety levels, as well as
our dramatically high and climbing crime rate.

Suicide rates, believe it or not, aren’t related to our
lack of
sunny days, but are instead, likely tied to our high
divorce rate.

Minneapolis, Minn., is the least stressful city, according
to the study. The anxiety level of the two cities doesn’t
seem particularly surprising, especially when you compare
their popular adages: “Seattle
Freeze” and “Minnesota Nice.”