Ignore It, and It Won't Go Away

Getting heads out of the sand on stress 

When it comes to every other major health condition that makes us sick, Americans don't tolerate it. We raise money for research, increase public awareness, and fight the problem, whether it's cancer or diabetes. But it's different with stress. That's just part of life, we're told. Just have to take it. Put your head in the sand and pretend the problem doesn't exist.

Accepting a condition that's at the root of tens of thousands of deaths and drives insane healthcare bills that are bankrupting the nation doesn't make any sense. The Smash Stress Campaign was created to challenge the belief that we have to accept stress and its enormous collateral damage. What if we fought stress with the same resolve and intensity that brought about change to smoking behavior?

The Missing $1 Trillion Link

How many lives could we save each year, how many billions of dollars, how much could we cut healthcare costs, by using a preventive approach to the $1 trillion sinkhole of stress? Want to cut the deficit? Start here.

Stress isn't just a personal issue. It's a social and national crisis at the center of an imploding healthcare system, unsustainable medical costs, and hair-trigger emotions that drive unhealthy conflicts at work and home and spill out into the accident and crime blotters of our communities. Stress is the missing link driving the whole mess. 

Put Stress at the Top of America's Most Wanted List

We don't have to sit by and take it. We can take stress on. All the research says so. This campaign is designed to put stress at the top of America's Most Wanted List, keep it there, and rally public support to recognize the toll it's taking on all our lives.

Our mission is to get stress prevention and management covered as part of the preventive services of the Affordable Care Act in the same way colorectal screening or cholesterol screening are covered. Millions of Americans are walking healthcare bombs unless the stress is identified and resolved. 

We also want to be a catalyst to help start public education campaigns about stress, from Health and Human Services to the Surgeon General and Centers for Disease Control. Ignorance fuels stress. Knowledge manages it.

Together, we can get healthy, cut the bills, and do something else quite extraordinary. Live our lives without the vise-grip of chronic anxiety. One of the insidious things stress does is it suppresses the play equipment in our brains. You can't get your life on the schedule when an ancient part of the brain believes you are in a life-and-death moment.

We hope to serve as a rallying point for everyone on the frontlines of stress, from the workplace, to researchers, to medical professionals. Let's clean up the mess of stress!

—Joe Robinson


Smash Stress 
3435 Ocean Park Blvd. #107
Santa Monica, CA 90405
Tel: 310-392-9580
E-mail: joe@worktolive.info