Americans are hyperstressed by current events; will we turn private pain into public solutions?
Yesterday was the Spring Equinox, the moment in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun when day and night are equal around the world, the Sun appears to cross the equator, and sunrise and sunset take place at due east and due west. If you were on the North Pole, the Sun floated along the horizon for the full 24 hours and dawn and dusk merged. It is a day of equipoise, when children are encouraged to balance eggs standing up (something you can in fact do at any time of the year), and for many cultures a time to mark transitions, spiritual and secular. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Mayans celebrated the day as a time of resurrection; Christians use the date of the spring equinox to calculate when Easter will be; the Persian New Year, Nowruz, begins on the equinox. If you are a home gardener, like me in the thawing-out Northeast, the equinox is a useful reminder to order seeds. In Annapolis, Maryland, boaters burn their socks to celebrate the end of winter and the return of sockless days on the water.
It’s important, these days especially, to remember that renewal is possible, because these are not happy times for most Americans. According to a recent survey done for the American Psychological Association, current events are stressing nearly everyone. Nearly nine in ten say rising prices of everyday items is a significant source of stress; eight in ten say the Russian invasion of Ukraine and resulting global uncertainty are significant stressors. Almost seven in ten say they fear we are at the beginning stages of World War III. Younger people report being more stressed than their elders, no doubt because they face more economic pressure. And Black and Latino adults report more stress than whites.
The two-year COVID disruption has also left a hard toll. Two-thirds of Americans say their lives have been forever changed by the pandemic. More than half report gaining (or losing) undesired weight, nearly half say they are less active, and almost a quarter say they are drinking more. While people are thankfully less fearful of COVID than two years ago, many of us are still grieving the people we’ve lost and the experiences we’ve missed. Almost seven in ten Americans say they’ve gone longer without seeing family or friends than ever in their lives because of COVID. And disagreements about the pandemic have harmed many personal relationships, with 58% reporting a relationship strain over things like disagreements over vaccines, mask-wearing or how to handle a possible COVID exposure.
The APA is rightly concerned that all this data points to a mental health crisis in America, and in particular the organization highlights how children are being harmed. “More than half of parents (57%) said they feel like their children could have benefited from receiving treatment from a mental health professional since the pandemic started — particularly parents of teens ages 13 to 17 (65%),” the APA reports. “During the first three-quarters of 2021, children’s hospitals reported a 14% increase in mental health related emergencies and a 42% increase in cases of self-injury and suicide, compared with the same period in 2019.” A majority of adults also report that they could have used more emotional support than they have received since the beginning of the pandemic. If you wonder why driving seems more dangerous (road fatalities jumped 18% in the first half of last year), or why people just seem more ornery in busy public settings, the answers are all here. People need a break and they’re not getting one.
If there’s any positive news from the APA survey, it’s that 71% say that they have gotten better at prioritizing what is important to them because of the pandemic. That probably helps explain The Great Resignation, where millions have chosen to quit their jobs and look for better or more fulfilling ones in the last year. Still, finding a new job hardly means an end to stress.
The question remains: how will our private experiences of stress be translated into public demands for relief? Like the Sun moving across the Equator and the egg balanced standing up, our body politic seems equally split at this moment. The state-by-state process of drawing Congressional districts has produced a national House map that seems to give both parties an equal chance at gaining or losing seats. The backlash politics over culture war issues like critical race theory or gay and transgender rights that Republicans have ridden to their benefit in places like Virginia, Texas and Florida are generating a rising response among young people and parents defending inclusive policies in public schools. Supporters of democracy here are heartened by the country’s overall response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has produced more national unity than we’ve seen in a while.
Still, politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. The stresses that Americans are dealing with as global turmoil rises are bound to find expression. And our two-party system, which is currently locked at a very high level of toxic partisanship, makes communal agreement harder. Will we indeed prioritize what is important to us and take concerted action together? Or will we fall for demagogues offering easy answers and scapegoats to blame? The coming of spring is a reminder that we can begin anew. The answer is in our hands.