Surprise bills add to new stress

BILLS. We all get too many, they seem to arrive in alarming groups and they often contain particularly nasty surprises. Now they have been blamed for adding a whole new type of stress to all the other worries of everyday life.

Dr Roger Henderson, author of two books on stress, has dubbed the phenomenon billness, and estimates that as many as one in four people could be suffering from the problem.

The crucial factor, he says, is that so many household bills vary from month to month or quarter to quarter. It is hard, if not downright impossible, for people to accurately predict what's inside each envelope.

The variable bills include mobile and fixed line telephone bills, metered gas and electricity bills, variable rate mortgages and credit card repayments. The average person now receives around 48 bills a year which fall into the 'potential shock' category.

Dr Henderson says symptoms of 'billness' include worrying constantly about bills and feeling you have no control over them, feeling anxious about opening bills and avoiding discussions about finances because of the stress it causes.

Research carried out with TMobile found that nearly half of people receive more than 60 unpredictable bills a year, while a suffering 13% get more than 100.

A letter from the Inland Revenue is the most dreaded of all for 26% of people, followed by 23% who hate the day their mobile phone bill arrives and 18% who hate getting letters from their bank.

Dr Henderson said: 'Variable billing isn't new but it's become much more prevalent with the rapid growth of mobile phones, home internet and of course the explosion in credit cards. One principle cause of stress is lack of control, which is why the rapid rise in variable bills is becoming a genuine problem.'

If stress triggers a migraine, acupuncture could be the answer, German researchers have found. But the Munich study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, also found that patients reported good results after treatment which resembled acupuncture - with needles inserted not as deeply and in the wrong places - but was not.

This may be because they expected the needles to work, or because their use affects 'pain memory'. Earlier this week a British study showed that acupuncture reduced pain from osteoarthritis.