Americana: Like Irritable Children

A man in Chicago spent hours shoveling snow to make a parking space, but when he returned to the spot with his car, he discovered that a woman had just parked there. Angry words, a scuffle, gunfire. The woman was shot to death.

That was the most violent sign to date of a common syndrome in the Midwest these days. Psychiatrists have a time-honored name for it: cabin fever. Many snowed-under Midwesterners are “behaving like irritable children,” says Northwestern University Psychiatrist Harold Visotsky. Adds University of Illinois Psychologist Christopher Keys: “Family groups feel more crowded. People who live alone feel their loneliness intensified. The cards are stacked against everyone.”