Are you sick and tired of the recession? And, more to the point, is the recession making you sick and tired? If the answer is yes, chances are you're suffering from Recession Flu.

It seems that as the country's economic health deteriorates, so too does our physical and mental constitution. To put it another way, now that Ireland Inc is bankrupt, we're all banjaxed.

Recession Flu is an umbrella term that covers a spectrum of disorders whose symptoms can include panic attacks, insomnia, gastric troubles, high blood pressure, lethargy, and an overwhelming sense of dread that makes sufferers just want to sink back under the covers each morning and make the world go away.

Doctors in Britain say that Recession Flu is as real as any textbook illness and the Royal College of General Practitioners believes it is building to epidemic proportions.

Chairman Professor Steve Field reported: "We are swamped with people who have flu-like illnesses. This may be because people who would normally feel able to manage their own symptoms, such as colds and temperatures, are so stressed and worried that they are coming into the doctor's instead."

Dr Mel Bates, a spokesman of the Irish College of General Practitioners, adds: "I know of one study compiled by a GP whose practice was in a town dominated by one major employer. When the employer went bust the number of patients presenting for treatment went through the roof."

The term Recession Flu is of more use as a buzzword to describe the distressed mood of these times, than it is as a medical description, because it's being bandied about as a catch-all for afflictions that can last a few days or for the remainder of a lifetime.

Short-term ailments, including panic attacks, insomnia and digestive difficulties, are generally the product of fear and uncertainty.

Professor Richard Wilkinson says: "Health worsens as soon as there is the threat of redundancies. The fear of unemployment is often more damaging than the actual loss of a job."

Psychotherapist Phil Hodson offers the small comfort that if you can think yourself into ill health, you can think yourself better. He says: "There isn't much you can do about the crumbling world economy, but you can change the way you think about it. Yes, the recession is destructive.

"But recessions are perfectly normal events that have always happened. This one pales into insignificance when compared with past wars and plagues. In the Great Depression of the 1930s, people suffered so much precisely because life was harsh and they owned so little.

"We enter this recession with a welfare system that didn't exist in the Great Depression, better housing, more central heating and labour-saving devices, more personal savings and capital and better networks of information and communication."

Trying to maintain a positive mental outlook will help to ward off the health damage categorised as the long-term effects of Recession Flu. "There are many studies linking recession and unemployment to heart disease," says Dr Mel Bates.

A Swedish study also sifted out possible contributory causes including social class, lifestyle and genetic factors, and concluded that unemployment on its own causes ill health, with men in particular more prone to cancers.

Another Swedish study that concentrated on young people found that unemployed women suffered health damage because they felt a loss of control over their lives.

Several studies have concluded that re-establishing a sense of control can be key to maintaining well-being in troubled times.

While drowning our sorrows or comfort eating might provide a short-term crutch, neither is a viable long-term strategy.

As they adjusted to unemployment, one group of participants in a 2003 US study began to smoke less, exercise more and eat less junk food.

Prof Christopher Ruhm, who conducted the research, said: "The bottom line is that people get physically healthier when times are bad. When people feel mentally worse, you wonder what you can control. You can exercise more and eat properly."

With 100,000 redundancies predicted here for 2009, fitness instructor Audrey McCarthy insists that a return to the 1980s needn't be all bad. She says: "I ran a gym in the 1980s, and when people were time-rich but cash-poor it was busy from morning to night with people working out."

There are some signs that the exercise revival is already on the way. Samantha Byrne works at the Leisurepoint gym in the Dublin suburb of Finglas. She says: "I have noticed more people turning up during the daytime. Apart from the regular members, there's been a rise in people paying for a single visit and in phone inquiries.

"There used to be exercise classes every morning, but we had to scrap them because it died completely. I suppose because people were working. But this week we started them up again for the first time in years."

Sounds like a plan. Just spare us the leg-warmers.

- Damian Corless