traumatic stress specialist Ms Christine Stubbs.

Ms Stubbs, who is travelling to China next week to see how Orientals cope with traumatic stress, said Bermudians were highly stressed because of the Island's size -- 22 miles long and less than two miles wide.

And she said living with parents or siblings suffering from alcoholism, drug addiction or mental illness is the major cause of traumatic stress in Bermuda's youngsters.

"I see a lot of traumatic stress here,'' she said. "The population is extremely vulnerable to stress because it is so small and there is no way to just get in your car and drive away.'' Symptoms of traumatic stress in children include personality changes, headaches, sleeping problems, bed wetting, nightmares and poor performance in school, she said.

And highly stressed adults who do not get professional help may end up suffering stress-related diseases such as cancer and heart disease, she warned.

Ms Stubbs, who was educated at Harvard University and is a guidance counsellor at Warwick Academy, said a lot of the problems with teenagers today are stress-related.

"Violence in the home has a severe impact on young children. It is inevitable that stress will have an impact later on. That is one of the reasons why so many young Bermudian men become self destructive. They tend to do dangerous things to themselves,'' she said.

Ms Stubbs is part of a group of psychologists and traumatic stress specialists from Europe, Britain and America who are travelling to Shanghai and Beijing in China on Tuesday.

They will be meeting with officials from the Chinese Police, hospitals, voluntary organisations and schools in those cities in an attempt to find out how the Chinese cope with traumatic stress.

Major causes of stress in those towns include earthquakes, floods and Police violence.

Some of the methods the Chinese use to treat traumatic stress, which Ms Stubbs is particularly interested in, include acupressure and aromatherapy.

The trip to China was organised by the Citizens Ambassador Programme and will be lead by Harvard University's Dr. Bessel van der Kolk.