- New research finds adults in the United States are feeling their highest levels of stress since the pandemic began last year.
- Experts say the majority of the nation is experiencing collective trauma at this point.
- Prolonged stress can affect both mental and physical health.
- Experts also say focusing on “basic self-care strategies,” such as well-balanced eating and sleeping routines, and daily exercise can help combat the negative effects of prolonged stress.
People in the United States are living under a mountain of stress, from a pandemic that shows no signs of abating to political unrest and economic instability.
As we near the one-year marker for the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, adults throughout the nation are reporting their highest stress levels since the start of the health crisis early last year.
The new survey “Stress in America: January 2021 Stress Snapshot” from the American Psychological Association (APA) offers a view into how this collective stress caused by the pandemic and its related social and cultural upheaval is affecting us.
“Nobody is immune to the stress that’s happening right now, different people are experiencing different levels of stress overall,” said C. Vaile Wright, PhD, APA’s senior director of health care innovation. “We just weren’t built to maintain this level of stress and hypervigilance and hyperarousal for this length of time.”
Wright told Healthline that given people are reporting their highest levels of stress since the beginning of the pandemic, people are showing “a lot of stress-related symptoms and emotions.”
Faced with the pandemic and political and economic uncertainties, “we are almost at a breaking point of so many stressors, with many of them out of our control.”
Source: healthline