Dr. Thomas Insel is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who served as Director of the National Institute of Mental Health from 2002-2015. In December 2023 he noted that since the Covid pandemic 38% more Americans were receiving some type of mental health care.
“We are facing three distinct crises, which partially overlap,” Insel contends. The first is a youth mental health crisis, the second is a crisis of serious mental illnesses like bipolar disorder, which particularly affects the homeless and the incarcerated, and the third is “the ongoing substance abuse disorder (SUD) or addiction crisis….”
I would add a fourth mental health crisis: the ever-mushrooming obsession with politics among so many Americans, particularly those on the left.
Since Donald Trump first became president in 2017, the divide between Americans has widened into a canyon filled with anger and bitterness. Politics have torn apart families and friendships, sparked senseless acts of violence and mayhem, and frequently replaced reason with rancor in debates in our corner taverns and the halls of Congress. Quite often we hear politicians and civic leaders employ the word healing when addressing this state of our nation, which strongly suggests that some illness exists in our body politic.
This mental and emotional turmoil inflicted by political beliefs shows up in the following ways:
1) The Unhappiness of Women
In February 2025, Grant Bailey and Brad Wilcox of the Institute of Family Studies analyzed a poll indicating that young liberal women were far less happy than their conservative counterparts. Some of this difference stems from attitudes toward marriage and religious faith, but Bailey and Wilcox also note that ‘catastrophizing’ thinking has dragged down the spirits of liberal women.
If you’ve been taught since elementary school that climate change is ravaging the earth and its atmosphere, then by the time you reach your mid-20s you will likely believe that catastrophe lies just around the corner.
2) The Bias of the Media
More recently, journalist Emma-Jo Morris attended this year’s White House Correspondents Dinner. “I always thought media bias was political activism,” she said. “But after Saturday, I now think it is much more due to a degree of self-worship that makes it impossible for them to distinguish their own ego from truth itself.”
Citing passages from the speeches delivered that evening, Morris writes:
The media isn’t biased because it’s liberal, it’s biased because it has no concept of reality. The people who make media content are incapable of separating their own self-worship from objective truth. Their egos dictate that they are so important, they decide ‘the truth.’
Being out of touch with reality and narcissism are signs of mental imbalance.
So, how can we as average Americans avoid becoming unhinged by politics … or maybe even find some relief if we’re already addicted?
First, we can select the most obvious remedy and limit the time we spend on screens immersed in the news. I adopted this tactic as part of this year’s Lenten penitential practices and found that cutting down on my news consumption did seem to lift my spirits.
Taking a realistic view of our national politics and our place in that realm can also help. Like most of our 340 million fellow Americans, other than voting for a particular candidate or contacting some elected official, we have little direct input into the workings of our national government. Yet when political storm clouds darken our day, we have a map and compass out of that weather in this simple prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
The first part of the Serenity Prayer encourages us to step back from obsessing over the national public arena, while the second part – “courage to change the things I can” – offers us the opportunity to engage where we can make a difference. If we’re unhappy with property taxes or with decisions made by our school board’s transgender policies for students, then we can show up at a meeting and make our voices heard.
Finally, we can treasure and embrace what we love, what is most important to us. Too many Americans have made politics their god. When we’re tempted to do likewise, we should remember all the other important beliefs, people, and things in our lives: faith, family, friends, work, pleasures as simple as a cup of coffee, beauty, truth, and goodness. Engage with these, and we can put politics in its proper place on the scale of our priorities.
As is usually the case, balance is everything.
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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.
(Pexels)
