An anxious Hammersmith reader, who is the girlfriend of a redundant City worker, asks if there is any truth in the rumour that the level of sexual promiscuity and drinking among City employees, or former employees, has risen because of the turmoil in the financial world and the consequent shedding of jobs.

Like you, I would have thought that this was probably just another urban myth had I not had lunch this week with Dr Sean Cummings, who runs the Freedom Health Clinic, in Harley Street, London. The clinic focuses on the health of City workers, including the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Cummings told me that in the past 12 weeks he estimates (and it is only an estimate) that there has been a 20 per cent increase in the number of patients attending his practice suffering from the increasingly common STDs such as chlamydia, herpes, warts and gonorrhoea. Not all the cases are rampant young people. Cummings has been surprised by the number of older patients with these symptoms.

Only part of the increase of these conditions can be attributed to the continuing national rise in their incidence. For example, gonorrhoea has increased by 42 per cent in the past ten years, chlamydia has increased by 150 per cent, herpes by 51 per cent and warts by 28 per cent.Syphilis has also increased considerably nationally. We didn't discuss this rise in syphilis, but I would be surprised if it was reflected in City statistics.

Cummings and his colleagues have been analysing why the credit crunch should have sparked such a rush of casualties from the bedroom. We agreed that if someone is in danger of unemployment, or already jobless, then insecurity and loss of self-esteem may produce recklessness and a desire for escapism. And people who have been rejected, or are in danger of being rejected, by their bosses and clients, may feel the need to boost battered egos by displaying prowess at the bar and in the bed - often one after the other. Cummings has noticed not only a rise in the number of City workers with these diseases but also a deterioration in their liver-function tests.

Judging by their Gamma GT scores (the most telling liver-function test), he concludes that many of the disappointed would-be financial kings and queens are drinking heavily and indulging in what some might consider wanton behaviour to forget their problems.