The Most and Least Stressed States of 2010

News
By published

Many Americans are stressed out, it seems, but some states are more frazzled than others, according to a survey by Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index.

The results are based on telephone interviews conducted as Jan. 1-Dec. 31, 2010, with a random sample of 352,840 adults, ages 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

[Read the full story]

Here are the results listed from least to most stressed and the percent of residents who said they had experienced stress a lot of the prior day:

  1. Hawaii: 30.2 percent
  2. Wyoming: 34.4 percent
  3. North Dakota: 34.6 percent
  4. South Dakota: 35.5 percent
  5. District of Columbia: 36.7 percent
  6. Iowa: 37.7
  7. Georgia: 37.7
  8. Delaware: 37.9
  9. Louisiana: 38.0
  10. Nebraska: 38.1
  11. Wisconsin: 38.1
  12. Alaska: 38.3
  13. Minnesota: 38.6
  14. Texas: 38.7
  15. South Carolina: 38.8
  16. Kansas: 38.9
  17. Florida: 38.9
  18. Vermont: 39.0
  19. Pennsylvania: 39.2
  20. Arizona: 39.2
  21. New Mexico: 39.2
  22. Illinois: 39.3
  23. Maryland: 39.3
  24. California: 39.4
  25. Montana: 39.5
  26. Oklahoma: 39.5
  27. Alabama: 39.6
  28. Colorado: 39.6
  29. Arkansas: 39.6
  30. Mississippi: 39.7
  31. Virginia: 39.7
  32. New York: 39.8
  33. Missouri: 39.9
  34. Maine: 39.9
  35. New Jersey: 40.0
  36. Indiana: 40.2
  37. Tennessee: 40.3
  38. Michigan: 40.3
  39. Connecticut: 40.4
  40. North Carolina: 40.4
  41. Washington: 40.9
  42. Rhode Island: 41.0
  43. New Hampshire: 41.1
  44. Nevada: 41.2
  45. Ohio: 41.9
  46. Oregon: 42.3
  47. Massachusetts: 42.6
  48. Idaho: 43.0
  49. West Virginia: 43.6
  50. Kentucky: 44.9
  51. Utah: 45.1

Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

TOPICS
Jeanna Bryner
Managing editor, Scientific American

Jeanna Bryner is managing editor of Scientific American. Previously she was editor in chief of Live Science and, prior to that, an editor at Scholastic's Science World magazine. Bryner has an English degree from Salisbury University, a master's degree in biogeochemistry and environmental sciences from the University of Maryland and a graduate science journalism degree from New York University. She has worked as a biologist in Florida, where she monitored wetlands and did field surveys for endangered species, including the gorgeous Florida Scrub Jay. She also received an ocean sciences journalism fellowship from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She is a firm believer that science is for everyone and that just about everything can be viewed through the lens of science.

Catquistadors: Oldest known domestic cats in the US died off Florida coast in a 1559 Spanish shipwreck

'Vaccine rejection is as old as vaccines themselves': Science historian Thomas Levenson on the history of germ theory and its deniers

Astronomers discover giant 'bridge' in space that could finally solve a violent galactic mystery
See more latest
Most Popular
A cat sleeping on a ship
Catquistadors: Oldest known domestic cats in the US died off Florida coast in a 1559 Spanish shipwreck
a diagram showing the Perseus galaxy cluster
Astronomers discover giant 'bridge' in space that could finally solve a violent galactic mystery
A lot of galaxies are seen as bright spots on a dark background. Toward the left, the JWST is shown in an illustration.
James Webb Space Telescope finds a wild black hole growth spurt in galaxies at 'cosmic noon'
A top down view of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's 1960s molten salt reactor experiment, an early precursor to the Chinese reactor.
'Rabbits sometimes make mistakes or grow lazy. That's when the tortoise seizes its chance': Chinese scientists make nuclear power breakthrough using abandoned US research
A crowd of people in Sants train station in Barcelona, Spain.
What is 'induced atmospheric vibration' and did it really cause power outages across Spain and Portugal?
Grand Prismatic Spring, Midway Geyser, Yellowstone.
Yellowstone holds potentially untapped cache of 'carbon-free' helium for rockets, reactors and superconductors
Rig shark on a black background
Do sharks make noises? An accidental discovery might just answer that question
an illustration of a satellite
China uses 'gravitational slingshots' to save 2 satellites that were stuck in the wrong orbit for 123 days
An image of the Circinus West molecular cloud
Scientists spot a 'dark nebula' being torn apart by rowdy infant stars — offering clues about our own solar system's past
A series of white military-style headstones are placed close to one another in the ground against a fence and bushes. A state historical marker is seen in the foreground.
Mass graves of Black Union soldiers slaughtered by Confederate guerrillas possibly identified in Kentucky