President Donald Trump’s sweeping first few weeks in office have seen military threats issued against Greenland and Panama, a gaggle of teens led by Elon Musk infiltrate the systems of multiple federal bureaucracies, refugee flights canceled, the start of mass deportation raids, and the erosion of transgender rights. The general consensus: The breakneck speed of change has been disquieting for many Americans. “I think we can take so much of something before the human brain just like peters out and says, ‘I can’t keep up,’” Sanam Hafeez, a New York-based neuropsychologist, told Axios. The digital news site interviewed a handful of psychologists and mental health experts about the impact on Americans. Andrea Bonior, a Georgetown University professor and psychologist, told Axios she has seen an increase in patients, largely Democrats, citing burnout and despair in part due to the mounting uncertainty generated by Trump’s rapid-fire policies and the energy required to keep up. “We are in an unprecedented time that we have so many collective stressors going on, and the rapid fire of media coverage of these policy changes, it’s just adding to that broader collective stress,” Daniel Relihan, a researcher at the Silver Stress and Coping Lab at UC Irvine, told Axios.
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