I was bullied through much of my childhood, beginning when I was seven years old, which was when we moved from New Jersey to a wealthy town in Connecticut in which sports were worshipped. I was, to put it mildly, not very good at sports. Not only was I somewhat uncoordinated, but my Attention Deficit Disorder (or complete lack of interest) caused me to space out when the phys-ed teacher was explaining the rules of whatever game we were about to play. When we were subsequently playing, of course, I wouldn't have any idea what was going on and would screw things up for my team. Or I'd be daydreaming in left field and miss a ball coming right at me.

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THE feeling is familiar: you are savoring the last of a leisurely Sunday lunch or a long walk in the park when you abruptly realize that your weekend will be over in a matter of hours. In an instant, you are deep in what John Updike called the “chronic sadness of late Sunday afternoon.” As you envision the to-do pile on your desk, the meetings on your calendar, and that trip to Topeka on Tuesday, your mood shifts again, your muscles tense and your head begins to ache.

You have a case of workplace-related stress. You also have plenty of company.

Poll results released last October by the American Psychological Association found that one-third of Americans are living with extreme stress, and that the most commonly cited source of stress — mentioned by 74 percent of respondents — was work. That was up from 59 percent the previous year.

For a man who is an accountant by training, Bob Anthony is following a rather unusual career path. In 2005, after years working as an accountant, and then in the tech industry, the Wellesley resident founded Adolescent Wellness, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to “simplify the prevention of depression and suicide in adolescents.”

Though depression was something Anthony was personally familiar with, helping others through it was not something he had ever trained for, or considered pursuing. Then came the phone call.

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From Plato and Aristotle to Descartes, the great thinkers have for millennia argued over what is known in philosophy as the “mind-body problem,” the relationship between spirit and flesh. Dualism tends to win the day: The mind and the body, while linked, are separate. They exist independently, perhaps mingling but not merging.

The debate lives on these days in less abstract form in the United States: How much of a difference should it make to health care — and health insurance — if a condition is physical or mental?