‘Perfect Storm Of Stress’: 2020 Ranked Among Most Stressful Years

ACROSS AMERICA — 2020 will no doubt be remembered as a stressful year for many, but it’s not the most stressful year ever. That’s what many historians at top colleges and universities agreed on in a recent report.

The year that’s coming to an end is ranked as just the eighth most stressful in the history of the United States, according to the 28 American and British historians consulted by Bloom Self Therapy, a self-therapy app that uses personalized video sessions to help users cope with stress, anxiety and depression.

“2020 has been the perfect storm of stress,” Dr. Seth Gillihan, Bloom’s head of therapy, said in a news release. “It’s brought disease, deaths, lockdowns, job losses and financial stress, plus culture wars and bitter political divisions. The only small consolation might be that we now have better tools than we used to for dealing with it.”

The most stressful year of all time — said historians at schools such as Cornell University, Stanford University and the University of Chicago — was 1862, which came during the height of the Civil War. 1929, the year of the stock market crash, tied for second with 1838, the year thousands of Cherokees were pushed from their lands on the murderous trek known as the “Trail of Tears.”

The historians ranked 1919 at No. 4. That year, the so-called Spanish Flu killed 675,000 Americans amid race riots, labor strikes and the start of Prohibition.

A few of the years more stressful than 2020 came during current lifetimes. 1968, which included the assassinations of both Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy — as well as riots, protests and violence — was No. 5. 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, was No. 6; and 2001, when America was shaken by the 9/11 terrorist acts, was No. 7.

Interestingly, the same historians rank 2020 as the No. 6 most stressful year in world history. 1348, the peak of the Black Death that killed about a third of the population in Europe and the Middle East, was put at the top of that list.