‘Florida Syndrome’ Haunts Newcomers Looking for Eden

In travel brochures and the songs of Jimmy (“Margaritaville”) Buffett, Florida is a palm-fringed haven from the rat race where ordinary troubles dissolve under a blazing sun.

But many newcomers are still hunting for paradise among the impersonal sprawl of shopping plazas and traffic-clogged thoroughfares.

“I came here with stars in my eyes,” says Francis Greene, a 28-year-old construction equipment salesman who relocated from Philadelphia in September. “I ended up with an ulcer in my stomach.”

In a state of “transplants”--780 a day by census estimates--Greene is one of the many rejections, say psychological experts and counselors.

Recently, more attention is being paid to the malaise that can beset Florida newcomers.

Experts say working families are confronted by demoralizing commutes, uninviting condominium complexes and the anxiety of random violence in a state where cash-and-carry gun purchases are still possible.

Isolation, Boredom

Retirees, they say, can face isolation and boredom. Others simply drop out.

“I call it the Florida Syndrome,” says Dr. Dean J. Rotondo, director of the neurological laboratory at Fair Oaks Hospital in Delray Beach, about 45 miles north of Miami. “It’s the reality of Florida versus the fantasy.”

Rotondo believes the funk is particularly strong in the 60-mile urban strip between Miami and West Palm Beach, where a nearly twofold population boom in the last 20 years has overburdened roads and sent developers to the fringe of the Everglades in search of land.

Stress-related ailments, such as depression and chronic anxiety, are the most common manifestations of Florida Syndrome, says Rotondo, a native of New York City.

“I, like many people, came here thinking that if I had a problem, I would just go to the beach,” he says. “Well, you can only go to the beach so much. When people come down here and find all the problems they left behind--and sometimes they are worse--what’s left is a lot of disillusionment and irritability.”

Stress Amplified

Dr. Joyce Glasser, a psychological counselor in Ft. Lauderdale, says the normal stress of moving is sometimes amplified in Florida because relatives and friends are often left behind.

“There’s always an adjustment process after a move,” says Glasser, who came from Chicago in 1977. “What we have here are people facing all these new ways of doing things. It hits some people quite hard.”

In Dr. Cesar Benarroche’s counseling sessions, some newcomers fret over a lack of convenient public transportation and the crime reports of a homicide every 6.4 hours. Some are even haunted by the peninsula’s flatness and air conditioners blasting on Christmas Day.

“You have to deal with Florida as it is, not like you imagine it should be,” says Benarroche, a former Yale University professor.

But accepting the urbanized Florida is particularly difficult for the elderly, who may have toiled during their careers with visions of an idyllic retirement in the sun, says Irwin I. Isaacs, a Ft. Lauderdale psychologist.

Aura of Death

Domestic friction and the aura of death greet many retires, he says.

“You have these large retirement villages, and each week there’s someone dying,” says Isaacs, who conducts seminars for disenchanted elders in South Florida. “You just make a new friend and then they are dead. It can be very disturbing.”

Isaacs, who moved to Florida from suburban Nassau County near New York City, says many retirees in his groups often can’t cope with the full-time presence of a spouse.

“Here’s the person you dreamed of spending your life with, and all of a sudden you say: ‘I think I hate them,’ ” he says.

Still, there are some who find that the warm breezes sweep them right off the mainstream.

Al Ackerman, 32, came to Miami from Chicago in 1984 seeking to make a stake in the real estate market.

He now does odd jobs in the Keys and occasionally hops a sailboat to the nearby Bahamas.

“The only Florida Syndrome I ever had was a hangover from too much rum,” he said one recent afternoon in Key Largo.

He then started to hum a Jimmy Buffett tune.