WRITING _________________________________________________________

6.1. Summarize the following text in 50-70 words.

THE GLOOM BELT

It’s not absolutely certain why folks are in such a bad mood in Oklahoma, but they are. They're even gloomier in Mississippi. As for Kentucky? Just try and find a smile. Things are a whole lot cheerier, though, in Iowa, Nebraska and the Dakotas. And not surprisingly, the happiest state in the nation is sunny Hawaii.

Those findings are part of a sweeping study of the national mood just released in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. If the data reveal anything, it's that while the Rust Belt and Sun Belt may have been the geographic definers of their day, in the current era of economic crisis, it's the Gloom Belt that matters more. Financial distress, after all, usually leads to emotional distress, and epidemiologists are working to identify which populations are hardest hit.

Between 1993 and 2001, 9% of Americans were found to be suffering from frequent mental distress (FMD); by 2006, that number had nosed up to 10.2%. The saddest state was Kentucky, with a steady 14.4% of residents reporting FMD. West Virginia was next. Its score of 9.6% in the first sample soared to 14.9% in the second, for an average of 11.2% of the population reporting FMD. The mood of Mississippians worsened similarly, with melancholy spreading from 9.4% of residents to 13.7%.

Hawaii's average score of 6.6% topped the happy list – though even in the Aloha State, that represented a slight darkening from the positively giddy 6.3% in the earlier survey. The next sunniest states were Kansas and Nebraska. Overall, 44 states plus the District of Columbia scored worse on the second survey than on the first; one remained unchanged; and only five (Colorado, Minnesota, North Dakota, Texas and Iowa) improved.

Not every segment of the population was hit equally hard by gloom. The most anxious folks were between the ages of 18 and 24; the least anxious were the oldest: 65-plus. Native Americans were the most-stressed ethnic group; the least stressed were Asians and Pacific Islanders. Of all the drivers of FMD, unemployment and other economic woes are the most powerful – hence lower-income Native Americans and higher-income Asians wound up on opposite ends of the FMD scale. Similarly, while there is legitimate economic distress among seniors living on fixed or declining incomes, it's students and recent grads who face the longest haul in economically unstable conditions. And the worst might be yet to come.

There's no quick fix for any of this, just as there's no quick fix for the rest of the economy. Still, it's clear that for all the leading indicators that can be helped by stimulus packages and bailout money, it's the national mood that could get the biggest boost.