The people most stressed out by the July 7 mass murder attacks in Britain? Muslim Londoners.

The stress caused by the terrorist bombings in London on 7 July 2005 was far more keenly felt by Muslim residents compared with other inhabitants, a psychological study reveals.

Sixty-one per cent of Muslim commuters surveyed suffered substantial stress in the days following the first terrorist attacks on the city’s transport system – almost double the proportion of stressed Londoners from other faiths.

“One can speculate it could be fear of reprisals and being upset about the misusing of their religion [to justify] terrorism,” says Neil Greenberg, at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, and one of the study team.

Overall, Londoners coped reasonably well, the researchers found, although one-third of commuters still felt substantially stressed 12 days after the attacks.