Americans are reporting chronic stress at unprecedented rates according to a new American Psychological Association poll. Studies show that as many as one third of Americans are highly stressed at any given time, increasing their risk for depression and anxiety. Mindfulness and biofeedback techniques designed to reduce stress, may also prevent or treat mood disorders like depression and anxiety a recent report finds.Chronic stress plays a central role in the onset of depression and anxiety, because stressed people often feel overwhelmed and unable to change their lives. In turn, stressed people tend to suffer from excessive fear, difficulty sleeping, negative mood, exhaustion, and feelings of hopelessness. Add persistent worrying and difficulty thinking clearly, and you have a recipe for mood disorders. What’s interesting is that chronic stress, anxiety and depression share the same physiological and neurobiological characteristics. When under stress, the amygdala, the brain’s emotion center, becomes sensitized to threat, fear, and negative feelings, and the body’s fight, flight, or fear response gets stuck in a pernicious feedback loop. In addition, the hippocampus, a brain structure involved in memory, is flooded with toxic levels of cortisol, leading to difficulties remembering events clearly. In the report, a team of researchers at Brigham Young University proposed that cost-effective mindfulness and biofeedback interventions that are designed to reduce stress, may also be effective in reducing negative mood, depression and anxiety.