A survey, released Monday, says New York City residents seem more mentally distressed compared to the nation as a whole.
The survey by New York City's health and mental hygiene department said nearly one in seven adults in the city described their mental health last year as being frequently "not good," compared with 1 in 10 adults in the national sample, reports The New York Times.
The findings were based on a telephone poll of 10,000 randomly selected adults conducted each year since 2002.
They confirmed what many New Yorkers have suspected: that life in the nation's most populous city can be difficult and lonely, The Times reported.
The poll said 13 percent reported that their mental health was "not good" on 14 or more days of the month, compared with 10 percent in a similar national survey.
The department's Dr. Lloyd I. Sederer said the reasons for the higher distress rate were not clear. "I wish we knew, in a way that we could say with confidence, why that difference is," he said.
Copyright 2006 by United Press International
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