As you report, Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg and his colleagues from the University of Heidelberg have shown that the brains of city dwellers respond to stress differently than those from the country (“A New York State of Mind,” June 25, 2011). Not surprisingly, the former have a higher risk of developing anxiety disorders and mood disorders than the latter. What is surprising in the results is that it does not matter where someone is living now, but where he or she was brought up. In other words, country bumpkins have fewer mental disorders in cities than their urban counterparts. They bring rural peace to the city, as it were. Also, urbanites cannot get rid of their mental disorders by moving to the country. Extrapolating a bit, urbanization that accompanied industrialization was thus relatively easy on those making the move, whereas “ruralization” that accompanies post-industrial development is an entirely different matter. Now urban hell is spreading to the countryside and disturbing the peace of its rural dwellers.