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The Geo-Political Landscape is Impacting Mental Health
And not in a good way
For over three decades I provided trauma-informed mental health and addiction treatment in the public and private sectors of New York City. Now residing in Montreal Quebec since 2022, I render trauma-informed care through virtual platforms. From an empirical perspective, I can attest that since the pandemic, therapy sessions (both virtual and in-person) have increasingly centered around stress, anxiety, depression and uncertainty due to political instability, polarization, economic disruptions and unbearable suffering brought about by human rights violations and looming threats of nuclear war.
What’s more, given that my area of clinical expertise is complex trauma, I’ve also witnessed how a contemporary landscape rife with instability and violence has activated core traumatic injuries and neglect originally incurred from systemic physical, psychological and sexual abuse. Hence, folks are plagued by catastrophic fears, acting out rage, and are at greater risk of lapsing into process addictions and drug and alcohol abuse.
As one would expect, throughout time tremendous variability in mental health, driven by a range of social, economic, political, environmental, and technological factors occurs. It’s not a steady decline or improvement. Rather, mental health trends…
