63 percent of Americans agree: We're screwed
Feeling stressed? There's good news: everyone around you is also reeling in pain.
A new report by the American Psychological Association found that -- surprise, surprise -- Americans are freaking out about the state of their country. Whether you're a liberal worrying about immigration bans or a conservative fretting about Starbucks cups or something, you're likely to be panicked. Sixty three percent of Americans say the future of the nation is a source of "significant stress," compared to just 62 percent of people who said the same thing about money and 61 percent who are anxious about their employment.
United, we panic, divided, we also panic.
The historical shift is fairly significant. In 2008, at the beginning of the Great Recession, the APA's Stress in America report found that 81 percent of Americans were anxious about money. In 2010, approximately 75 percent were.
This is the first time the APA has asked questions related to the nation's future in a survey, Sophie Bethune, the APA's Director of Public Relations and Special Projects told Mashable in an email.
Democrats tended to be disproportionately more worried than Republicans; 73 percent of Democrats are anxious about the future of their country, compared to just 56 percent of Republicans and 59 percent of independents.
Fifty nine percent of the study's respondents think this is the lowest point in our nation's history, in their memory at least. However, the study included a significant numbers of millennials, so plenty of those surveyed haven't lived through other critically dark times in our history like the Cold War, the Civil War, and the era when people thought JNCO jeans were cool.
Anxiety tended to be divided by issue, with health care (43 percent), the economy (35 percent), trust in the government (32 percent) and hate crimes (31 percent) topping people's lists.
Climate change and environmental issues were slightly lower, with just 21 percent of people reporting significant stress.
Women are significantly more stressed than men (5.1 to 4.4. on a 10 point scale) and black and Hispanic men are more anxious than white men (4.8 compared to 4.2). The gender and racial divide doesn't mark a dramatic shift. Women and people of color have reported more stress throughout the APA's 10-year history of the survey.
People on the laid back West Coast reported being more stressed (70 percent) than those in the South (63 percent), the East (60 percent) and the Midwest (60 percent). People in my personal friendship circle report being stressed 100 percent of the time.
The finding is fairly consistent across generations, with older adults being the least stressed (57 percent) and Generation X-ers being the most (61 percent).
To learn more about national stress levels, check out the full survey here. And to help relieve your stress, watch this baby goat dance around in a sweater.
If that goat can be happy, then so can we.
Topics Politics
Heather was the Web Trends reporter at Mashable NYC. Prior to joining Mashable, Heather wrote regularly for UPROXX and GOOD Magazine, was published in The Daily Dot and VICE, and had her work featured in Entertainment Weekly, Jezebel, Mic, and Gawker. She loves small terrible dogs and responsible driving. Follow her on Twitter @wear_a_helmet.
