The Lucky, but Anxious Australians

So says the researchers from Macquarie University:

AUSTRALIANS could be developing a mass anxiety disorder as community fear rises, and it is the Muslim community that feels it most, new research shows.

Macquarie University psychologist Dr Doris McIlwain said that with constant reports of terrorist attacks, natural disasters and climate change, it was little wonder that people were more fearful.

The constant reminders people were given to be suspicious could be turning Australia into a society with a sort of "mass anxiety disorder", she said.

This is what "might" be causing the anxiety:

The survey also indicated that the media might play a role in perpetuating this fear with 67.2 per cent of the Muslim community feeling they where negatively portrayed by the media, compared with only 19 per cent in the broader community.

You don’t say?  Life in Australia is very good, but you wouldn’t know it by reading the newspapers or watching the news where it is mostly doom and gloom.  Where I work the office has a subscription to the Age newspaper and talk about a depressing newspaper.  Just about every day there is an article about how we are all going to die from global warming, the whales are all going to die, John Howard is going to kill everyone with his nuclear power plant idea, Australia is a rogue state because it sells uranium, Bracks’ water desalinization plant is going to kill all the fish in Port Phillip Bay, and the list goes on and on. 

I think it just goes to show how good life must be if the thing you have to worry about most in your life is some boogeyman that is never going to effect you anyway. I believe it was Franklin Roosevelt that said, "that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself", is often times very true.