In First Year Of Donald Trump Era, Americans Now More Stressed About Future Than Work Or Money, Study Says

In 2017, the first year with Donald Trump in the White House, Americans now say that the future of the country stresses them out more severely than the common stressors of work and money. However, there is only one group whose overall stress level has not risen from 2016, according to the annual Stress in America survey sponsored by the American Psychological Association and released this week.

In First Year Of Trump Era, Americans Now More Stressed About Future Than About Work Or Money, Study Says

The study, conducted in August — seven months into the Trump era — surveyed 3,440 Americans and was offered to both English and Spanish speakers. According to the survey’s findings, “the future of our country” ranked as the No. 1 source of stress for Americans, and though respondents identifying as Democrats were more stressed about the country’s future than Republicans, stress levels are high “across party lines,” according to the APA.

Overall, 63 percent of Americans in the survey named the country’s future as a significant source of stress, while slightly fewer — 62 percent — listed “money” and 61 percent named “work” as a major cause of their stress. Placing fourth on the list was “the current political climate” at 57 percent, followed by “violence and crime” at 51 percent.

But while Americans across demographic groups reported a rise in their stress levels from 2016, there was one group of Americans that according to the survey experienced no increase in stress from last year — white people.

Women showed higher stress levels than men overall, but black and Hispanic men also reported increases in stress compared to white men.

In addition, 59 percent of Americans reported feeling that they were living through the “lowest point in our nation’s history that they can remember.” That bleak outlook was reported by all generations, including Baby Boomers (ages 53 through 71) who lived through the Vietnam War and the often violent protests against the war back home, with 57 percent of that age group calling the Trump era the lowest point for the country in their memories. The 39 through 52-year-old generation known as “Gen X” had the bleakest outlook, however, with 61 percent calling the current era the country’s lowest point.

Even a significant majority of Americans 72-years-old and older — the generation that lived through World War II and in some cases the Great Depression — said that right now is the lowest point for America that they can remember, with 56 percent saying so.

The psychological survey is consistent with other American “mood” polls, such as the October Gallup poll which found that only 21 percent of Americans — a mere one in five — called themselves “satisfied” with the direction of the country.

The APA study also found that stress about the country under Trump is a bipartisan phenomenon. While nearly three of every four Democrats, 73 percent, said that they were stressed by the future of the country, a sizable majority of Republicans (56 percent) also felt major stress over America’s future, as did 59 percent of Americans with no party affiliation.

Though 59 percent of the Millennial Generation, ages 18 to 38, say that America is currently hitting the lowest point that they can remember — a lower percentage than Gen X but slightly higher than Baby Boomers or World War II-generation Americans — the Millennials also reported the highest average stress level of any of the four age groups.

And while Americans overall report about the same stress level as last year, they also report experiencing increased symptoms of stress such as “anxiety, anger and fatigue.”

[Featured Image by Joe Mahoney/Getty Images]