Mar 17, 2025 By Garrett Neese 5 min read

The tumult of large-scale cuts to federal spending, pullbacks of civil rights protections, and new tariffs getting announced and pulled back, are taking their toll on psyches across the country, including in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Like most stressful times, these are also making their ways into the daily sessions with the therapists trying to assist people with their problems.

Nika Orlando, a therapist in Waynesburg, said the current events are bringing people into contact with existential issues, whether insecurity, isolation, or a lack of identity.

“I think that whenever we encounter these types of variables, we start to experience a lot more anxiety, depression, fear,” said Orlando, who uses they/them pronouns. “A lot of the time, too, I think it’s because what we’re really looking at is, ‘What does tomorrow look like? What does it look like for people that I love, or what does it look like for me?'”

Patients whose jobs depend on grants that have been imperiled are feeling the strain, as are patients who worry their insurance won’t cover lifesaving medical procedures anymore, Orlando said.

“A lot of those mental health issues, although they’re very heavy for someone, they’re really almost becoming secondary issues to these deep, existential issues that this is causing them to encounter,” Orlando said.

Karlee Young, a counselor in Uniontown, has been hearing most about fear, which can lead to stress responses in both mind and body.

Some patients are worried their rights have become less secure. Some are simply worried about others, Young said.

“I’ve had a good bit of people who come in and they might still feel kind of secure just based on their standing or different sociopolitical factors, but they’re aware that other people are not as safe, and that really weighs on their hearts,” she said.

Orlando, who has been practicing for 14 years, said the stress is registering more broadly among his clients than it did at the start of Trump’s first term in 2017.

After that initial impact, the fear receded among majority groups, who became more acclimated over time, Orlando said. The 2025 version seems to be creating a wider, longer-lasting effect, they said, which is bringing a wider spectrum of people the same instability marginalized groups were already feeling.

“Certainly that doesn’t mean that those other populations that have already experienced it aren’t worse for wear,” Orlando said. “They’re experiencing even higher degrees than what I think they were dealing with in 2017. But now we have a larger pool being impacted by it. So it’s going to look like a bigger swing, because there is a bigger swing.”

When advising people on how to cope, Orlando’s starting point is directing them to where they experience love and connection. If they don’t have that, then Orlando works to help them find some place where they can find it.

“If we have to go through our suffering alone, it’s going to be immensely difficult, but many hands make for light work,” Orlando said. “If we have many people lifting each other up, we’re able to face those existential concerns. We’re able to face our suffering in a way where we can receive that love and care just as much as we try to give it.”

Orlando next works to find the ways in which people experience their stress. If it’s expressed more physically, they might clients to a yoga instructor or physical therapist. Orland can also help people relax their bodies through means such as guided meditation or clinical hypnosis.

For someone whose reactions are happening more emotionally, Orlando will try to help them be better-equipped to see that they have multiple choices in how to face something.

That can come through a variety of techniques, such as use of metaphor to help people reframe their feelings into a new context.

“It might also look like somebody understanding what’s their quality world, what is the ideal world they want to live in, and what are actionable things they can do to move towards that,” Orlando said. “But it all comes back to this idea of choice and freedom, and knowing where those choice points are, knowing where those intrinsic freedoms as a human to live your life are, and how you can pursue those even under restriction.”

Young recommends finding a way to talk about their experience, which can help people recognize what’s going on in their bodies.

She has patients go through grounding exercises with the five senses, as well as progressive muscle relaxation, going through the body from head to toe to see where people are holding their tension and how to release it systematically.

Many of her conversations with patients have also dwelled on how to manage their exposure to current events. In a time of doom scrolling and smartphone alerts, people are responsible for building their own limits, Young said.

“Everybody does want to stay informed about what’s going on, and things are changing so rapidly, but finding some kind of boundary about how you take in that information and how much can make a big difference as well,” she said.