He pressures caused by financial worries are a major cause of psychiatric illness, according to a study by Dr Scott Weich from the Royal Free Hospital school of medicine and Prof Glyn Lewis from the University of Wales. They publish their work in the latest issue of the British Medical Journal. They found that the prevalence of the most common mental disorders, anxiety and depression, has been shown to be associated with unemployment and poverty, independent of occupational social class. They discovered that financial strain was a powerful predictor of both the onset and maintenance of cases of mental disorder, even after taking account of different standards of living.