Anxiety

Tax increase? After City Council voted to approve a 2012-13 budget, Councilman Curtis Jones said, "I think we shared the pain. ... we don't like going around raising taxes for anyone. " I'm sure most citizens believe that Council members don't enjoy raising taxes, but the question has to be: Why do they always have to raise taxes? The 3.6 percent property tax increase is the third increase in as many years. Property owners in Philadelphia will be paying 17 percent more in taxes than in 2009.

You are sitting back in a comfortable chair with wires hooked up to your forehead and fingers, playing computer games. Rather than moving the man on the screen manually, you are doing it with your brain. No, it is not telepathy. It is biofeedback, a treatment technique in which people are trained to improve their health by using body signals, which are charted through computer symbols. In biofeedback, the computer acts as a kind of sixth sense for the patient, monitoring vital signs such as pulse, skin temperature and heart rate, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

Sitting alone in his car on Halloween evening, Dean Ceraolo felt it coming on again. Another anxiety attack. He needed to calm himself. He needed some prescription drugs. "I knew from the past that they calm me down and help me with these little episodes," the former Air Force mechanic testified yesterday in Montgomery County Court. So Ceraolo wrapped a torn shirt around his face, grabbed a bumper jack from his car and entered the Philmont Pharmacy in Huntingdon Valley.

These are the times that try men's psyches. There's so much to worry about: the war, the election, Wall Street, the credit crunch, housing values, the unemployment rate, bank failures, our 401(k)s, our jobs. Even without a little marital discord or a family illness, you've got a recipe for high anxiety. "In my 20 years of practice, I have never seen anything like the last couple of weeks in terms of what we're seeing coming into our offices - the volume but also the intensity of the anxiety," said Nancy Molitor, a psychologist who works in suburban Chicago.

A Boston doctor says a drug commonly used for hypertension dramatically increased SAT scores among a group of high school students. Harris C. Faigel, director of university health services at Brandeis University, said he had given the so-called beta-blocker propranolol to 25 of 31 high school seniors who were retaking their Scholastic Aptitude Tests. Students who took the drug one hour before the exam performed an average of 130 points higher than on their first SAT tests. The six other students improved their scores by an average of only 20 points - the average improvement nationally for students who take the SAT a second time.

Richard Lewis seemed nervous. "I look like hell," he said. Actually, he looked like he lived there: black pants, black shirt, black jacket, black shoes. Black underwear? "I try. " Like everything about Lewis' life, his clothes are depressing, and therefore useful to his career. Gentleman's Quarterly profiled Lewis' wardrobe last year. "The wardrobe from hell," they called it. Black hair, too. Thick, healthy hair. We asked if he uses anything special. "Fear. Fear makes it stand up. Anxiety mousse . . . My hair will jump out one day instead of fall out. Oh, that's good," he said, and wrote it down.

Once again we have entrusted our children to professional educators, kissing the upturned, trusting faces and waving goodbye with a certain relief and a certain anxiety. The anxiety is well-placed, for this year once again our children will be learning material that is completely baseless, grounded entirely on the new-age, politically correct consensus of well-meaning fools. I refer, of course, to mathematics. Mathematics is a sort of necromancy or pagan religion. It has no basis in fact or in theory.

As we learn about the recent terrorist attack on London, it is to be expected that some of us will feel anxious about our own safety and that of our loved ones. This type of anxiety is natural and even to be expected. Indeed, for some people, this tragedy can bring back powerful emotions associated with 9/11 and other traumatic events. Most of us will be able to manage these feelings by using our natural support systems and healthy stress-reduction methods, such as exercising and eating well.

What will we be forced to laugh about next now that the Bobbitt story is over? Will there be clever headlines, political cartoons and columnists guffawing aplenty if some husband removes his wife's breasts with hedge- clippers? When is enough, enough? Sorry, but the humor eludes me. The pathetic Bobbitt humor from Newsweek headlines ("Hanging By A Thread") to political cartoonists and Howard Stern's hucksterism all added up to the most appallingly tasteless episode in the history of our mass media.

You've all known men like him. During his entire working life he put in 10- hour days at the office, and on Friday he brought home a full briefcase to occupy him on the weekends. He loved his kids when he noticed. He was the classic workaholic; when he arrived from the office, he was dragging more than his feet. He looked exhausted, ravaged by tension, torn by anxiety. Then he retired. Friends said, "You can relax and develop a hobby. " Now he arrives home dragging more than his feet.