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Politics Is Breaking Us — Just Ask These Therapists

The political therapy boom has arrived.

Illustration by POLITICO (source images via iStock)

By Catherine Kim, 05/15/2026 03:00 AM EDT, Catherine Kim is an assistant editor at POLITICO Magazine.

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.

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