Columnist Susan Snyder: It’s time for us to un-stress

Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2004 | 8:17 a.m.

One wonders how we'd have fared if we had less sunshine.

But at least there were three cities in which it is more stressful to live than Las Vegas, according to a study released last week by the Sperling's Best Places website, www.bestplaces.net.

Las Vegas ranked fourth most stressful among 100 large metropolitan areas studied. Tacoma, Wash., was first, followed by Miami and New Orleans. New York City ranked fifth.

Among midsize metropolitan areas, Galveston-Texas City, Texas, was rated most stressful. Yuba City, Calif., took top hand-wringing honors for small metro areas.

Just thinking about Yuba City stresses me out.

In making their decisions, the Best Places minions considered divorce and unemployment rates, commute times, incidents of violent and property crimes, suicide rates, alcohol consumption, mental health and the number of cloudy days.

Alcohol consumption was among the two least important categories, which is unfortunate because we're really good at that. Cloudy days was the other consideration given the least weight. Too bad. We're good at avoiding those -- it's like we don't even have to try.

Unemployment, crime, commute time and suicide rates counted most.

Not sure why we fared poorly. Our commute times are pretty fast. We drive everywhere at 75 mph. And we got Britney Spears hitched, even if it was only for 55 hours.

"Las Vegas has a robust economy, but had the highest percentage of divorced residents and the highest rate of suicides," the study says.

"The turbulent lifestyle of Las Vegas produces some extremely stressful conditions -- the highest suicide and divorce rates in our study, as well as a great deal of alcohol use," it says. "Unfortunately, the greatest number of sunny days per year doesn't seem to translate to overall happiness -- residents of Las Vegas have a great number of days experiencing poor mental health."

Of course, about 100 of our sunny days annually top 100 degrees or more. And I find it particularly challenging to be perky when it's 116 outside. So which cities were the goody-two-shoes of stress management? The Albany-Schenectady-Troy area of New York state and Harrisburg-Lebanon-Carlisle, Pa., tied for first place as the least-stressful places to live.

And Orange County, Calif. was the second least stressful. Of course, the tally was completed before a mountain lion killed one Orange County bicyclist and maimed another in two separate attacks.

Las Vegas often is considered unfriendly to bicyclists -- one national magazine even called it the worst place in which to ride a bike a few years back. But I've found that only applies to when one is actually riding. People treat us just fine the rest of the time.

At least the locals run over us with cars like everyone else and don't bring wild animals into the mix.

On a positive note, high incidence of violent crime and divorce rates pushed Miami and New Orleans ahead of Las Vegas in the stress Oscars.

Tacoma was a train wreck in terms of divorce, unemployment, suicide and property crime, the study says. Its rate of violent crime was low, but it's cloudy a lot of the time.

Good thing our cloud is only dust.