STUDENTS risking burn-out from the pressure of studying for dozens of exams; farmers stretched to breaking point watching their livelihoods wiped out in the foot-and-mouth crisis; a nurse left a nervous wreck from the strain of trying to run two hospital units.

These are the typical stories which hit the headlines day after day, and yet they all have one thing in common - stress.

The evil plague of modern day living is not choosy. Background, wealth and status hold no value when the dreaded symptoms of stress begin to seep into our daily lives.

Triggers can include death, divorce, marriage, moving home or new jobs. But, according to Dr Joan Harvey, a psychologist at Newcastle University, it is often quite difficult to locate the exact cause.

"It can be the last bit of liquid which makes the pan overflow," she says.

"People might notice you're a lot more fidgety, you may not be able to concentrate for as long, keep bursting into tears, get tired very easily or get a lot of headaches.

"In addition, there's longer term symptoms such as coronary heart attacks or ulcers. Stress can wreck your immune system, making you more susceptible to flu or stomach bugs.

"If it's severe and it's got to the point of being a clinical problem, it can take weeks and months to recover."

Headteacher Helen Quick, 46, resigned from her Newcastle primary school after admitting changing the answers on her pupils' Standard Assessment Test papers.

In one fell swoop, her actions effectively led to professional suicide. But when you look at the horrendous hours she was working leading up to the incident, toiling away every weekend, sometimes as late as 10pm, coupled with the pressure to hit the Government's national targets and succeed in the school league tables, you can understand what led to her actions. Union bosses said work had become everything to her. She had also had no deputy head to help her for the past year.

"Presenteeism is where work can become an obsession. You see it in people working all hours, who feel no one else can do the job as well as they do. The type who are always on the end of a mobile phone when they're away," says Dr Harvey.

"Then there's the problem of burn-out such as if you continue piling work on people. In the early days, symptoms will include irritability and feeling tearful, etc, but in the final stages there is a complete feeling of exhaustion and an inability to cope." But if, as research shows, about three quarters of illnesses can be put down to stress, why wasn't it common for previous generations to collapse with burn-out?

"There were different stresses 100 years ago. Then, if you were off sick, you didn't get paid and, if you were the main breadwinner, you would be left worrying how you were going to feed your family.

"They didn't have rush hour traffic and hours sitting at a VDU. But then life expectancy was lower, so they probably died before heart disease kicked in. There was no research done in those days into stress.

"Today, there's a lot of social pressure. It's about people feeling the need to keep up."

But what can be done to alleviate stress? In jobs such as teaching or in the medical profession, the demands are constant and are not affected by time. There is no release felt after hitting a deadline or a monthly sales target. It can be difficult to see a way out of work without changing careers.

"If you're in a sort of job that is making demands and it's taking its toll because you have to work weekends and nights then the ways to deal with it aren't that easy," says Dr Harvey.

"You can start trying to walk away from non-essential tasks but that's not always possible.

"If you feel you're in such a mess you can't stand it any longer, you can leave and claim constructive dismissal but if you do you will find all your problems are aired in public at an industrial tribunal."

But there are a number of ways to help alleviate stress.

"Some of them are technical, like learn time management," says Dr Harvey.

"Exercise can help alleviate tension and so can humour. A good belly laugh relaxes almost every muscle. Or try going from some meditation like yoga."

But unless there are changes made in the workplace - a place where we strive for perfection, where we battle on with our impossible workloads - for some there may be only one option. Helen Quick has just exercised hers.