Maine is Brutally the Most Stressed State in New England

Mainers clearly need to chill out, at least according to a new study concerning stress.

Wallethub.com, a personal finance website, recently published its annual report of the most and least stressed states in the nation.

Our wonderful state didn't fare so well, especially compared to our New England brethren. The Pine Tree State was listed as the most stressed state in the region. Yes, even behind Connecticut, and that can't be easy to do. I mean, imagine having to live in Connecticut?

Overall, Maine was listed as the 20th most stressed state in the nation, which is pretty terrible. The next highest ranking for a New England state came from Rhode Island. The tiny little nook was ranked 28th overall (kind of close, but not really).

Maine's stressful score was 44.88 out of a possible 100 points. The scoring system is based on four major categories: work-related stress, money-related stress, family-related stress, and health & safety-related stress. These categories were broken down into 40 subcategories to make it as detailed as possible. You can read more about the methodology here.

Maine's rankings were all over the place. The state actually had decent rankings for work-related and family-related stress. The work-related ranking 38th and family-related was 34th. If those were the only categories, Maine would be doing alright.

What really hurt Maine's stress ranking was in the money and health-related categories. The money-related category came in with a brutal 18th ranking. Even worse, the health-related category was an abomination at 14. These two scores really dragged Maine down.

I mean, it's not shocking to see money-related stress hurting Maine. We are talking about a state that is pricing out Mainers left and right. And I think it's safe to say the health-related stress ranking directly correlates with money-related stress.

So what about the rest of New England?

As mentioned earlier, Rhode Island came in as the 28th most-stressed state. Connecticut was 31st, Massachusetts 36th, and Vermont 40th.

Congratulations to New Hampshire, which came in as the 4th least-stressed state in the entire nation. Apparently, it pays to "Live Free and Die".

These rankings beg the question of what can we do better here? What are other New England states doing that Maine isn't? The last thing this great state needs to be is a negative outlier compared to the rest of the northeastern region.