The World Health Organization has described stress as a World -Wide epidemic and a 1992 United Nations report labeled Job Stress "The 20th Century Disease". Research shows that job stress costs employers approximately $2 billion annually in absenteeism, sub-par performance, tardiness, and worker's compensation claims. Estimates claim that more than 50 % of adults report high stress everyday, 60 to 80 % of accidents on the job are stress-related, and 60 to 90 % of visits to primary care physicians are for stress-related problems. Children are increasingly reporting signs of stress. Dr. Barbara Howard, a pediatrician at John's Hopkins, as quoted in a Newsweek article on stress by Jerry Adler, says a quarter of her patients are there for stress-related problems. The article goes on to report that parents are often worried about what their children are stressed out about. The children are actually worried about their parents and whether they are going to be sick, angry, or they're going to divorce. Often they have the same global worries that adult's have - war, environmental issues and crime.
Stress as a World -Wide epidemic