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Rapid and unpredictable changes increase anxiety and depression.

Increased anxiety from societal changes happens in people across the political spectrum.

Increasing community connections can help people reduce anxiety.

In my most recent Psychology Today blog post[i] I wrote about the harmful effects of people becoming used to bad things and worsening life situations. This post is about what happens when people aren’t numb to those bad things breaking around them.

Increasing External Chaos Is Bad for Your Health

When significant changes occur, many people experience anxiety, which may be paired with depression. Those mental health problems can be heightened when changes are outside of the person’s sphere of control, so they are perceived as assaults on their autonomy.

Such chaos-induced anxiety is increasing. A recent article in The Guardian described how therapists are seeing more patients for anxiety and depression related to external chaos beyond the individual’s control.[ii] Those insights are consistent with the conversations I’ve had with mental health clinicians and other people inside and outside the health care world.

Anxiety Causes Physical Harm

Increased anxiety is not just a mental health concern. It causes physical, personal, professional, and relationship problems. Increased long-term anxiety has been shown to not only lead to depression, but also elevated cortisol levels, higher blood pressure, and depressed immune function.[iii]

Responding to Chaos and Uncertainty

The key to responding to expanding external chaos and stress is to engage in ways that provide people the opportunity to regain some sense of autonomy. The alternative is for people to disengage from the chaos as much as they can, so that they essentially let themselves become numb to all the changes and their loss of autonomy. While that alternative may reduce anxiety and depression in the short term, it can lead to longer-term ill health effects when all the external changes catch up with them—either directly or indirectly.

For example, ignoring world-changing events by turning off the news can be an effective tactic.........

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