In the United States, therapists are seeing an influx of patients consumed by political news. A bipartisan phenomenon, fueled by social networks and polarization, which also questions Europe.
Hours of “doomscrolling” on social networks, images of the Middle East under bombs, graphics announcing the collapse of the economy, the title of a YouTube video: “NUCLEAR APOCALYPSE”. Politico describes an illness that is growing in the United States: political anxiety.
The media describes the emergence of an unprecedented phenomenon, Americans, more and more numerous, are crossing the door of a psychiatrist’s office for the first time not because of bereavement, a breakup or burn-out, but because political news is making them sick. “This is the first time we’ve seen people enter therapy because of political anxiety,” Veronica Calkins, clinical director of Pacific Mind Health in California, told Politico. The movement accelerated according to her after the second inauguration of Donald Trump, in January 2025.
If Democratic voters are affected, the phenomenon is not limited to one camp and therapists also report a growing influx of conservative patients. Adam Luke, a therapist in Tennessee, describes Republican voters who voted for Trump three times and find themselves “extremely frustrated” with their own party. One of his sixty-year-old clients told him that he had believed in the system for forty years and no longer believed in it at all. According to a survey by the American Psychological Association cited by Politico, last year 76% of Americans placed the future of their country at the top of their sources of stress, ahead of the economy or work.
Permanent overexposure to information
What fuels this anxiety, beyond polarization, is permanent overexposure to information. Therapists interviewed by Politico identify a trait common to almost all of their politically suffering patients: compulsive consumption of current affairs. Jason Odegaard, a therapist practicing in seven American states, describes patients who leave CNN or Fox News on for twelve hours a day. His first prescription: turn off the television and limit yourself to one hour of news per week. Doomscrolling, the habit of endlessly scrolling through a stream of bad news, functions as an amplifier of anxiety.
Will the question arise beyond the United States? In France, the political climate of recent years brings together several of the ingredients described by Politico: a presidential election in 2027 which already structures the public debate, recurring institutional tensions, a rise in extremes and international conflicts which saturate news feeds. France is experiencing eco-anxiety; it is perhaps discovering, without yet naming it, “political anxiety”.
Has modern politics become a permanent source of psychological anguish? Kevin Smith, a political scientist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who runs workshops for therapists with Brett Ford, has few illusions. He estimates that the policy’s impact on well-being will be difficult in 2026 and “probably worse in 2028,” when the US presidential election takes place.
