Eight months before the US election, the Washington Post reported that psychologists and massage therapists had observed a new flavour of stress in their clients — “Trump anxiety”. One masseuse described clients lying on the massage table ranting about the presidential candidate. “It stresses me out to listen to it,” she said. “I can’t give you a good massage if I’m grabbing your shoulders like Donald Trump’s orange face.”
Then a group of American therapists published an anti-Trump “manifesto” because they wanted to protect the wellbeing of their clients. In it they argued his public rhetoric was normalising what therapists work against — “the tendency to blame others in our lives for our personal fears and insecurities and then battle these others instead of taking the healthier but more difficult path of self-awareness and self-responsibility”.
This week the American Psychological Association’s report, Stress in America: Coping with Change echoed the masseuse’s and therapists’ observations. It reported the first significant increase in anxiety since the national survey was launched 10 years ago. More than half (57 per cent) of Americans polled in January said they were stressed about the current political climate and 66 per cent were anxious about the future of the nation.