More people than ever are suffering ‘election depression’, therapists claim.
Shrinks across the United States have reported an uptick in the number of patients who feel debilitated by their fears of what’s to come after November 8.
Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are unpopular in their own ways – one having never held office and spewing divisive rhetoric, one carrying decades of political baggage.
The thought of either one as president has left scores of voters struggling to sleep, suffering panic attacks, and even reporting heart palpitations.
Though elections always provoke feelings of uncertainty, therapists speaking to Daily Mail Online insist this cycle seems worse than ever.
Their advice to their patients? Register to vote and do yoga.
Fears: The thought of either Hillary or Donald as president has left scores of voters struggling to sleep, suffering panic attacks, and even reporting heart palpitations, therapists say
‘It has become a topic, people are more stressed out in general,’ Dr Jared Skillings, a therapist in Grand Rapids, Michigan, told Daily Mail Online.
‘My experience as a specialist is that people are very upset this time around.
‘People are fearing for the future. It seems to be about which candidate you dislike more.’
He is hardly the only one to see a spike in depressed patients.
Dr Robert Leahy is the life-time honorary president of The American Institute for Cognitive Therapy.
Having worked decades in the field, he has never seen anything like it.
‘This election seems to be triggering more anxiety and even depression,’ he told Daily Mail Online.
It has happened before, he says.
When George W Bush was elected ‘there were a lot of people feeling that the end of the world was coming’. And many people touted the idea of moving to Canada during the Reagan and Nixon campaigns.
But reactions to this year’s candidates seem more fierce.
‘For the last few elections I didn’t see the kind of fear, anger and anxiety as I’ve seen this time around.’
Though it could be his clientele, Dr Leahy says the majority of patients depressed by the election are fearful of a Trump administration.
‘Trump makes a lot of people anxious,’ Dr Leahy explained. ‘Even though people may not like Hillary, I don’t hear that anxiety.’
What, then, should voters do to calm their nerves?
Stop reading the news and take up yoga, according to therapists who spoke to Reuters Health.
They said they were advising clients to limit exposure to the news and take up breathing exercises and yoga to calm down.
‘I’ve never seen this level of stress and anxiety over an impending election in my 26 years (of practicing),’ said Nancy Molitor, a clinical psychologist from just outside Chicago.
Molitor said she had two elderly patients who were worried that their grandchildren would inherit an America in turmoil.
Another, a World War Two veteran, sees similarities between Trump and the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Molitor added.
Clinton has accused Trump of racism and sexism, and her campaign frequently calls him ‘unhinged’ and unfit for the presidency, saying he has a volatile temperament that could endanger U.S. national security.
Trump, in turn, has said Clinton is a corrupt life-long politician who should be jailed for her use of a private email server without official approval while she was secretary of state.
What, then, should voters do to calm their nerves? Stop reading the news and take up yoga
Philip Muskin, professor of psychology at Columbia University Medical Center, said the anxiety among his patients reminded him of the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 al Qaeda attacks, and the crashing to Earth of America’s first space station, Skylab, in 1979, which had people around the world worried they could be hit by falling space debris.
‘Things where, for everybody, the sense of control is gone,’ Muskin said.
Adding to the anxiety is the fact that the two candidates in the November 8 election are the most unpopular in modern U.S. history.
Some 57.5 per cent of Americans have an unfavorable view of Trump, and nearly 54 per cent have an unfavorable view of Clinton, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling.
There is no data available to quantify the election-related anxiety, but the therapists’ anecdotes give some insight into the state of the national psyche.
Elaine Ducharme, a clinical psychologist from Glastonbury, Connecticut, said the election was also on the minds of all of her patients.
‘I can’t think of a person I’ve talked to (who) does not feel anxious about this,’ she said.
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Therapists, themselves, aren’t immune to these anxieties.
‘I can’t say to my patients, ‘Oh my God, it’s making me a wreck,’ but I can sit and empathize,’ Ducharme said.
Lynn Bufka, executive director for practice research and policy at the American Psychological Association, said one patient was concerned that much of the criticism of Clinton was just because she was a woman, and this had affected how the patient viewed herself.
‘What does this mean for her as a woman? Have things really changed that much for her in terms of what she can do?’ Bufka recalled the patient wondering.
Trump has said Clinton, who would be America’s first female president, lacks a ‘presidential look’ and has called other female critics ‘fat,’ ‘pig,’ or ‘bimbo.’
Bufka said Latino and Muslim patients are also anxious about Trump’s proposals to build a wall along the Mexican border and to temporarily suspend immigration by Muslims.
Her advice: ‘Turn off the news feed. Stop reading everything if it just gets you more stressed.’