Big City Blues

In the past month both Chicago and New York Magazines have featured articles about the higher level of stress in large cities and bigger states. New York’s title was “You’ll never have stress in this town again: 91 ways to kick the tension habit.” Both cities seem very preoccupied with too much stress in their metros.

The fact that there is more stress in large cities didn’t surprise me at all. In fact I think that part of the success of my book Boomtown USA, is that so many people are looking at getting out of the rat race of large cities to more tranquil places like my agurbs®.

The average number of psychologists per 100,000 residents in the USA is 31. The top 10 states with from 42 to 161 per 100,000 are DC, VT, MN, MA, NY, CO, IL, RI, NH, and PA. The lowest 10 states with from 11 to 18 per 100,000 are: LO, MS, SC, NV, AL, AR, OK, TX, KY and IN.

What was particularly interesting to me was that the top 10 states with most psychologists have 57 agurbs® compared to 84 agurbs® in the lowest. Also of interest is that, with the exception of CO, the highest ratio of psychologists to residents all voted for Kerry in the past presidential election. The lowest ratio states…all voted for Bush.