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10 Unhappiest American Cities

No sun, no jobs and lots of foreclosures. This can be a recipe for unhappiness.

Not surprisingly, some cities whose residents struggle with lots of these issues also have high levels of suicide, clinical depression, divorce and violent crime.

BusinessWeek.com ranked 50 of the largest metros based on their misery and depression levels. The depression scoring is based on insurance reporting. The rest of the rankings come from the National Assembly of County & City Health Officials, FBI crime reports, the U.S. Weather Bureau and the U.S. Census.

While it’s not clear that the recession has made these social issues worse – most of these cities had these problems before the economy headed south – and economic woes certainly can’t be helping.

Here are the top 10 most depressed cities.

1. Portland, Ore.
2. St. Louis
3. New Orleans
4. Detroit
5. Cleveland, Ohio
6. Jacksonville, Fla.
7. Las Vegas
8. Nashville, Tenn.
9. Cincinnati, Ohio
10. Atlanta


Source: BusinessWeek.com, Prashant Gopal (02/26/2009)