High school teacher Julie W. said she feels constant worry, stress and existential dread. She can’t stop checking the news. Julie said if she tries to take an hourlong nap, it turns into a five-hour nap. Other times she doesn’t sleep at all. She has picked at her skin and chewed her lips until they bled and stained her clothes.
The cause? Politics.
Julie, who lives in Roslindale, said the symptoms began slowly, then crashed over her the day after the 2024 presidential election.
“We are an incredibly polarized country right now, and we are totally divided. And that division, it transcends politics … it breaks down community and it creates isolation and feelings of loneliness,” said Julie, who asked her last name not be published due to concerns of repercussions at work.
Julie referenced the daily barrage of news updates and executive orders from President Donald Trump’s administration, saying she constantly thinks about her most vulnerable students and how they are impacted.
“Right now, I’m just so concerned for the mental and physical, emotional safety of my students. And I internalize that. Their anxiety is my anxiety,” Julie said.
Julie decided to seek therapy and started sessions in January.
She’s not the only one. Mental health providers in Massachusetts said they’ve noticed an uptick in demand for services since the election, and research shows the uncertainty related to a tumultuous political climate wreaks havoc on the psyche.
Elly Humphrey is the owner and clinical director of Queer Therapy Boston. She said the business, described as therapy by and for the queer community, is receiving twice the number of inquiries as usual. They have upwards of 300 active clients with a running waitlist, and they’ve had to make referrals out to other practices.
Humphrey said the spike happened in the run-up to the 2024 election, and rose again around Trump’s inauguration.
“Politics is really impactful for people’s mental health, especially if you’re part of a marginalized community,” Humphrey said of the queer community.
In addition to seeing an influx of new clients, Humphrey said there’s an increase in distress among existing clients.
She said politics comes up in every single session she has. “Even if it’s not the main topic of the session, it’s the unavoidable backdrop to everything else.”
Prior to the election, Humphrey said that was not the case. “When something is actively scaring, distressing people it becomes forefront of the minds.”
Since taking office, Trump has repealed dozens of Biden-era executive orders protecting gay and transgender people from discrimination. He signed an executive order stating the United States will only recognize two sexes and ordered that federal funds not be used to promote “gender ideology.”
Trump directed the federal government to restrict access to gender-affirming care for youth and signed an order seeking to bar trans athletes from women’s sports.
“Everybody is really scared I would say,” Humphrey said.
Humphrey acknowledged the stigma around getting therapy for political distress, especially perpetrated by those aligned with the current administration.
“Yes, people do need to get therapy because of Trump and because of right-wing politics and because of hate,” Humphrey said.
Studies show that the political is personal, seeping into everyday life and impacting mental health.
Nearly half of U.S. adults surveyed in a
PLOS One study
conducted in 2020 said politics significantly impacts their health, causing stress, loss of sleep, suicidal thoughts, shortened temper and obsessive thoughts.
“Huge numbers of Americans clearly and consistently perceive politics as exacting a chronic negative toll on their health,” researchers wrote, estimating that 12 million Americans report having suicidal thoughts because of politics.
“These findings could hardly be more supportive of previous research arguing that more attention should be paid to the link between politics and health,” researchers wrote.
Political polarization is also associated with anxiety and depression. Participants in a 2020
Science Direct study
who reported a perceived increase in polarization had higher odds of developing anxiety, depression and sleep disorders compared to participants who reported no change in polarization.
Christy Denckla, an associate professor of social behavioral sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said throughout history there are patterns showing an increase in mental distress during times of political upheaval.
She noted that long-lasting chronic stress is worse than acute stress when it comes to health outcomes.
According to Denckla, the more uncertainty there is, the more chronic and enduring the mental health effects can be.
“This moment in history is filled with so much uncertainty for so many people in terms of access to healthcare, social safety net programs, equity, job security, free speech and fair representation,” Denckla said.
She added, “We could expect a commensurate impact on mental health as we saw in prior national population-level traumas like the pandemic.”
Dr. Michelle DiBlasi, chief of inpatient psychiatry at Tufts Medical Center, also noted fear of the unknown as a driver of anxiety.
Like Humphrey, she said more patients have been seeking services in recent months, “People kind of are afraid as to what will come next, what will change, what impact it will have on them.”
For some, therapy can be a life or death intervention, Humphrey said.
She encouraged those struggling to reach out for community. “No one person can carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, and just taking care of your own mental health as a queer person is, you know, an act of resistance in a way.”
Julie W., the high school teacher, said it’s too soon to know if therapy is working for her, but she plans to stick with it and hopes to regain the ability to appreciate the small things in life.
“I’m proud of myself for getting help,” she said.
This post was originally published on here
