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2022 in a Word: Permastressed
Neverending crises have caused unprecedented stress and anxiety. Before we can get better, we must acknowledge the seriousness of the problem.
“Why is everyone so messy right now?” the journalist Jasmin Malik Chua asked earlier this month on Twitter. I responded that messy sounded like the word of the year. “I would also vote for permastressed,” Chua wrote back. She’d heard the word when a CEO in a panel discussion said, “Being in a permacrisis means I’m permastressed.”
A whopping 27% of U.S. adults say they’re so stressed most days that they can’t function normally, according to a survey released in October by the American Psychological Association. Younger adults are particularly permastressed.
The rest of the country isn’t doing so well, either. Three-fourths of respondents said stress had caused feelings of nervousness, anxiety, sadness, depression, fatigue or a headache at least once in the past month.
The neverending crises
Rooted in political polarization, sowed by disinformation and online hate speech, and…
