Therapists across the country are seeing a surge in clients who say politics is taking a toll on their mental health, according to a new article in Politico Magazine. One therapist told the publication, “This is the first time that we’re really seeing people initiating therapy because of political [anxiety].”
An American Psychological Association survey found that about two-thirds of Americans said politics was a significant source of stress in their lives in 2025. Politico reports that psychological associations are holding workshops on addressing mental health problems tied to politics, and clinics are holding staff meetings on tackling the issue. Some therapists are even specializing in political anxiety. A friend who works as a therapist told me that he lists “climate grief” as an area of expertise.
I am not a therapist. But I have thought about and engaged with politics day in and day out for most of my life without going (entirely) crazy. When friends and acquaintances ask me, with increasing frequency, how to deal with the stress of paying close attention to a world awash in crisis, I share the following thoughts.
A healthy media diet is not unlike a healthy food diet.
As many political thinkers on the left have argued, optimism is not just a temperament. It is a strategy and outlook that can be consciously cultivated, especially in concert with others. Even when it may feel pointless, focusing on what can be done is worthwhile. Expressing dissent, minimizing harm, notching incremental wins and building networks and ideas for the future are not just the right things to do — they build discipline and faith in action that can pay off in the future when better opportunities arise.
Many people’s instinct is to gorge on news in response to major — and often horrible — developments. But this can confuse political awareness with political involvement. A good citizen is broadly informed about what is happening in their society. But that doesn’t mean letting the hourly news cycle land blow after blow to your psyche.
A healthy media diet is not unlike a healthy food diet: It requires deliberate, moderate consumption and balance and variety. Rather than endlessly doomscrolling on social media or having thousands of notifications hold your attention span hostage, budget how much time you allow yourself to consume political news in a given day or week. Read weekly and monthly magazines that take a longer view and try to make sense of the daily mess. Read about issues other than politics — there’s a lot more neutral or good news in the science world, for example.
Books are even better for a big-picture perspective. Novels are great for many reasons but from a political perspective, they remind me that many of our social problems constantly recur in different forms and encourage us to consider them with empathy and nuance. History books remind me that while things can feel rough at the moment, humanity has overcome problems that dwarf many of the ones that plague us today — total global warfare, plagues that wipe out huge swathes of humanity, famines, slavery and many other normalized acts of cruelty and exploitation that boggle the mind.
Learning about the history of the left in particular reminds me to think of our contributions to society as part of a series of cycles stretching across time; no one person’s actions can change the world permanently, but those of us immersed in the struggle for progress are, at our best, helping create links between the best traditions of the past and the needs of the future. It might not sound relaxing to contemplate past catastrophes, but there is consolation in knowing you have good company across generations in facing off against the world’s problems and injustices.
Healthy consumption of information is only one way to build resilience. A huge source of political anxiety and depression stems from a feeling that one is helpless. But you’re not — there are always opportunities to get involved in civic, political and labor organizations. Problem-solving helps restore one’s sense of agency and purpose. And it is grounding to seek alignment between one’s values and one’s actions. Find your people, focus on a handful of issues and find a way to sustainably contribute to putting in work and problem solving in a routine manner. Plus, people tend to treat one another a lot better at political meetings than they do online, and it’s also a way to make friends and have fun.
Conveniently, this is both a way to feel better and to actually build democratic power. Particularly at a time when many people are realizing how our political parties are not up for the task of solving the scope of problems we face, it’s more important than ever for people to act in solidarity to advocate for the kind of world they want to see, instead of delegating it to empty suits.
Of course, nobody can — or should — be immune to feelings of uneasiness, despair and rage in response to oppression and devastation. I myself am hardly a picture of total equanimity. And when you yourself are facing the direct consequences of a harsh policy that is restricting your freedom, it makes perfect sense that it would be a blow to your mental health. But my intention is to try to flesh out how we can have at least some self-sovereignty and influence over our ability to be functional in the world in the face of a seemingly never-ending torrent of bad news.
Hope is more essential than ever when things feel particularly dark.
It can also be helpful to draw from a spiritual tradition to renew one’s sense of the purpose of being and acting. For me, that includes meditation that draws from Buddhist lineages and deliberate community-building. For you, it could take an almost infinite number of forms. This is not about withdrawing from the world, but connecting with it in a way that’s calm and unmediated by algorithms and alarmism or demagogues and doomsayers.
Lastly, I would note that one small thing we can do at the level of social norms is buck the ritualized doomerism that often prevails on the internet. The stance that “everything is bad and getting worse” is commonplace on social media sites, where many people are endlessly cynical and often vicious toward their fellow users. This blinkered view rewires people’s mindsets to constantly scan for a slow drip of bad news as proof of society’s endless freefall and lose perspective on what is working and worth cherishing.
And there’s another doomerist-adjacent custom that we should also discard. People will sometimes sheepishly offer a bit of good news — about the world or themselves — to others by prefacing it with, “I know things are terrible in the world right now, but….” I say: Drop the guilt-laden preamble! Say it boldly! Human experience is varied and complex, good things and bad things always coexist.
Hope is more essential than ever when things feel particularly dark. Don’t let tyrants and oligarchs ruin the pleasure of a good meal, a job promotion, a beautiful piece of art or falling in love. Don’t let them temper your pride in a burgeoning mutual aid group or small garden or tiny ragtag neighborhood patrol to protect immigrants in the community. Savoring that, which is pleasurable or encouraging — or just simply working OK — is going to help us get through this mess. Celebrate life when you can. It’s all we’ve got.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy.