Politics Is So Broken It’s Driving People to Therapy

It’s hour three of doomscrolling on X, each post more unnerving than the last: charts predicting economic collapse, headlines of a failed assassination attempt, YouTube video thumbnails with the title “NUCLEAR APOCALYPSE.”

Your chest tightens and your head is pounding — from too much screen time, too much dread, or maybe both. Is this a panic attack? You look up “political anxiety” in a frenzy and come across an advertisement for a therapist that seems too good to be true.

“Our cognitive therapists can work with you on how to manage stress and mental health concerns linked to current events,” the ad says. “Learn how we can help you regain control and improve your quality of life.”

There are countless ads like this on the internet, and they seem to be reaching their intended audience. American politics has been deemed broken for years, but something new is happening: Not only are more people depressed or anxious about the state of the world, but now they are seeking professional help. And therapists are more than ready to give it.

With anxiety over politics reaching new heights and crises flashing relentlessly across our screens, mental health professionals say they’re seeing an influx of patients distraught about the news coming out of Washington and beyond.

“This is the first time that we’re really seeing people initiating therapy because of political [anxiety],” says Veronica Calkins, a clinical director at the California-based Pacific Mind Health.

Calkins says she saw the surge begin after President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, with liberal patients afraid of what was to come. But other therapists say conservatives are also walking in more frequently amid political despair. Political anxiety appears to be a bipartisan affliction.

“The vast majority of people are affected in some way [by politics],” New York therapist Melissa Tihinen says of her clients at Downtown Psychological Services. “And that’s more true today than it ever has been in the past.”

Public polling backs this up: 65 percent of Americans said politics was a significant source of stress in their lives last year, according to a survey from the American Psychological Association. In fact, the leading cause of stress was concern about the future of the nation, at 76 percent, above the economy or work or money. Therapists say these figures have often been high, but it’s a recent phenomenon for such distress to actually drive clients into their offices — a shift fueled both by the destigmatization of mental health care and by the sense that some people are reaching a breaking point.

As a result, therapists are also adapting and some have begun to specialize in the area. Within her own practice, Calkins has been tasked with seeing the clients who come in for political anxiety, including focusing on how it affects other stressors in a person’s life. Others in the field see political anxiety as such a pervasive issue that they believe every therapist needs to learn how to tackle it in a session. Tihinen says her practice has held staff meetings dedicated to addressing best practices in handling political anxiety.

A number of state psychological associations across the country have also held workshops to address how politics is reshaping Americans’ mental health amid growing demand from therapists. The workshops, hosted by University of Nebraska-Lincoln political scientist Kevin Smith and University of Toronto psychologist Brett Ford, present research on political anxiety to help therapists navigate the issue within their own practices.

“For people for whom politics is most stressful, I talk about the strategies people are using to cope with that stress,” Ford says. “Identifying ways that people can cope with political stress that doesn't just involve sort of tuning out and turning away.”

The rise in political anxiety represents a remarkable development in American life. The climate is so polarized, and news and politics are such a constant and deeply personal presence in our lives, that huge swathes of the country are emotionally exhausted and fearful. So much so that they need a mental health professional’s help to cope. It’s a worrisome shift, not just for millions of individuals but for the country at large. If civic life is defined by such chronic stress, can American democracy really function healthily over the long term?

It was the war in Iran that sent Joe spiraling this time.

Headlines of the U.S. bombing missions, images of a smoke-filled Tehran, social media posts predicting another prolonged war in the Middle East — all of it exacerbated his anxiety. He had to bring it up with his therapist.

“My face was completely red. I was kind of trembling,” recalls Joe, whose last name is being withheld because he feared harassment for his political views. It wasn’t always like this. There was a time, two years ago, he says, when current events and politics hadn’t taken over his time with his therapist. That’s completely changed.

Therapists say they are seeing more and more clients like Joe, who are addressing political issues during the bulk of their sessions, or even having first-time clients reach out solely because of political anxiety.

The frequent trigger? Major political events.

“It’s rooted in a lack of control or some kind of helplessness — that this is happening, and I am unable to influence the outcome,” Calkins says. “No matter what I do, nothing is going to help.”

Recent events that have driven a bump in the number of clients include the war in Iran, the ICE crackdown in Minnesota and Trump’s State of the Union address — all of which supercharged feelings of despair for those on the left who don’t agree with the current administration.

Yet therapists who have a large share of conservative clients have also seen an increase in people feeling overwhelmed by the news and struggling to make sense of the world around them.

“I think that there’s this interesting dynamic where more of my liberal clients will think that the Republican clients are just sitting in happiness right now. But that’s not necessarily the truth,” says Adam Luke, a Tennessee-based therapist who is part of a conservative therapist network.

Luke says his conservative clients feel a similar sense of helplessness as their liberal peers — whether it is because of Washington’s lackluster response to the “Epstein files” or because of Republicans’ failure to pass the SAVE Act election overhaul.

“I’m getting more individuals — they were Republicans, they voted for Trump three times — and now they’re extremely frustrated with their party because even though their party is in power, they don’t feel like they’re being heard by their party,” Luke says. “My clients that are in their 60s are like, ‘For 40 or 50 years, I’ve believed in the system. I truly don’t believe in it anymore. This is the last time I’m ever going to vote.”

A key reason people are feeling more anxiety about politics, to the point of seeking professional help, is because it’s become so personal. Political debates become more urgent when they revolve around one’s identity.

Alan Jacobson, a Boston-based family therapist who says he now almost exclusively sees clients facing emotional difficulties because of politics, notes that many people define politics as an issue of morality. With the stakes so high and hyperpolarization rampant, there are inevitably more personal clashes over politics, which leads to more isolation and ultimately more anxiety.

“Fear is the is the real word here,” Jacobson says, “And when we’re afraid it leads to all of our emotions being significantly intensified.”

The other major factor in rising political anxiety is people’s unending access to content: TV shows, newspapers, podcasts, and social media bombard people with news and commentary at unprecedented levels, overwhelming their viewers-readers-listeners to the point of emotional exhaustion. In fact, the therapists said, one trait was ubiquitous among their political anxiety clients: They were voracious news consumers.

“They have CNN or Fox News on in the background 12 hours a day,” says Jason Odegaard, a therapist with clients across seven states, stretching from Florida to California. “And so usually, one of my first interventions is: Turn off the TV and watch it for one hour a week and watch headline news at the most. You don’t need to hear all the details over and over. … That’s what increases anxiety.”

Beyond recommending a media detox, therapists have a few other prescriptions (aside from the pharmaceutical kind). Some point to radical acceptance: the art of coming to peace with situations one can’t control, so an inability to change things doesn’t turn into suffering. Others suggest shifting approaches to activism, perhaps writing letters to lawmakers instead of attending protests in person.

But if engaging with civic life increasingly requires emotional coping strategies, what does sustained participation in democracy look like for a stressed and divided public?

The worst-case scenario, for the country, if not for one’s psyche, is total withdrawal.

“One of the most common ways, like low-hanging fruit ways, of managing anxiety is avoidance,” says Ford, the University of Toronto psychologist who runs workshops for therapists. “When you pair anxiety with hopelessness and feeling like there’s nothing you can do, that creates the perfect storm for widespread political disengagement.”

That’s not the inevitable outcome for America. Political anxiety is ultimately a form of chronic stress, the kind that seeps into daily life — and humans are surprisingly resilient to chronic stress. That’s particularly true, Ford says, if they follow the right coping strategies, be it finding small ways to continue civic engagement or embracing radical acceptance when needed.

Still, these therapists are unlikely to run out of patients anytime soon. Certainly not as long as each election is seen as such a high-stakes affair by those on both sides of the aisle.

“I think the impact of politics on well-being is going to be hard this year,” says Smith, who runs the political anxiety workshops alongside Ford. “I think it is probably going to be worse in 2028.”