  We present a study of parity (P) violating contributions to the eigenenergies
of stationary systems containing atoms in spatially inhomogeneous external
electric fields. In this context the subtle interplay of P-violation and time
reversal (T) invariance plays an important role. If the entire field
configuration is chosen to exhibit chirality the energies are in general
shifted by pseudoscalar contributions which change sign under a planar
reflection of the field. To calculate the effects we use the standard model of
elementary particle physics where the P-odd interaction arises through the
exchange of Z-bosons between the quarks in the nucleus and the atomic
electrons. We consider in detail hydrogen-like systems in unstable levels of
principal quantum number n=2. The nominal order of P-violating effects is
10^-5...10^-9 Hz which is determined by the mixing of the 2S_1/2 and 2P_1/2
states. However we point out that it is possible to enhance the P-violating
energy shifts dramatically! Instead of energy shifts linear in the P-violation
parameters we get then shifts proportional to the square root of these
parameters. Numerically we find such energy shifts to be of order 10^-5...1 Hz.
Application of our technique to hydrogen-like atoms with a nucleus of spin
I=1/2 yields P-violating energy shifts which are very sensitive to the nuclear
spin dependent P-odd force, which receives a rather large contribution from the
polarized strange quark density in polarized nuclei. Thus, a measurement of
these energy shifts could provide an important tool to elucidate nuclear
properties connected to the so called ``spin crisis''. We also present a method
for treating degenerate perturbation theory which combines advantages of both,
Kato's and Bloch's methods.
