Political stress often gets discussed during election season. However, US presidential administration policies in 2025 continues to create great uncertainty for many individuals. These uncertainties extend to economic, employment, health, international, social, and civil rights issues (among others). They also add political anxiety and stress for many individuals and is often extremely stressful for mental health clients.
Polls indicate high levels of worry and uncertainty about how the current administration manages a range of issues. Some of these concerns varying across the political spectrum. Others appear to be shared concerns across most citizens.
Research finds political anxiety and stress affects both mental and physical health. And extensive research for the past 50 years finds that stress in general has large impacts on these health metrics and on our immune system.
But what contributes to political stress and our divisions over it? Work by Brett Ford and Kevin Smith point to a mix in-group/out-group differences, self-concept, cognitive appraisal, and other factors at play. These natural factors contribute to how we view, are divided by, and get emotionally aroused or stressed by politics.
So what do we do to help clients? Some in the stress and coping tradition advocate for completely disengaging with the stressor itself. This is sometimes the right move, but is problematic as a “blanket” strategy. In general, this strategy often reinforces avoidance as a coping strategy. Avoidance is ineffective for most (not all) situations and even make those situations worse. It also leads to specific mental health difficulties (e.g., social anxiety, PTSD).
Complete disengagement from politics specifically can backfire. Our society in designed for us to be apart of the political process, even if passively. That is, the effects of political measures affect clients lives even if they do not want to pay attention to it. For example, political campaigns to remove certain medical coverages are an unavoidable stressor when going to the doctor’s office.
So what do we do to help clients engage with true political anxiety and stress in a way that helps it not sneak up on them later? There are a number of strategies based on stress and coping research:
- Limit exposure to news media on politics to small bits each day and week (if not avoiding it completely)
- Seek sources of positive social support. It is important to focus on how we feel about what is occurring, not on bashing the opposing side. The lad can bring up increased frustrations.
- Seek enjoyable and meaningful activities to boost mood and focus attention away from political stressors. This is in the vein of behavioral activation. There are good trainings for behavioral activation and good therapist resource books.
- Lack of sense of control can contribute to stress and anxiety. Take back a sense of control by engaging in the political process locally or engaging in causes one cares about (e.g., nonprofits, volunteering, etc).
Political stress hits so many of us from time to time. It also hits many mental health clients particularly hard. Therapists resources for political stress provide clients with effective ways to approach political stress to limit its impacts on physical and mental health.
