Summer 2025 Issue

Supporting Clients in Today’s Political Reality
By Sue Coyle, MSW
Social Work Today
Vol. 25 No. 3 P. 22

Clinical social workers must strive to offer their clients the support they need, as both navigate the political divide, discourse, and reality of our time.

In September 2024, less than two months before the presidential election, Gallup reported that 80% of adults in the United States believed the country was deeply divided. The results were an increase of three percentage points from 2016 and more than 10 percentage points from 2012 and 2004.

The impact of such a divide on any one individual may weigh heavily, particularly when coworkers, neighbors, and family members stand on the opposite side. What’s more, it is far from the only aspect of today’s political reality affecting the emotional if not physical wellbeing of those in and connected to the United States.

Social workers providing direct service in today’s political climate must be prepared to support their clients as they work to understand and address how politics has become—perhaps more so than ever before—personal.

Impact on Services
The first step in effectively providing services to clients/patients, no matter the setting, is to recognize that what is happening today—nationally and globally—is being felt by all, not just those (though of course those) directly and immediately impacted. And that feeling is different for each person, each family, and each community.

“What happens in the world impacts everybody, but it impacts everybody in their own way,” says Jennifer Bulow, LCSW, PhD, a psychotherapist in Los Angeles. “There are some collective experiences around it. The first thing we might do clinically is just to acknowledge that it’s part of what is impacting our client, no matter what.”

However, she adds, “Social work as a professional title means a lot of different things, so it probably depends on the nature or the kind of social work you’re practicing, how you might interact with the political and its meaning to your clients. Social workers in schools in LA for the past two weeks have had a different job, a different relationship to the political than I do in my private practice.”

For some clients and thus their social workers, the political is imminently and tangibly present, as they, for example, fear deportation and/or a change to their immigration status, lose employment due to cuts to federal agencies and federal grants, face the end of in-kind and financial support from various programs and organizations, are no longer able to receive specific medical care, and more.

Jacqueline B. Mondros, DSW, dean and professor emeritus at SUNY Stony Brook University School of Social Welfare in New York and executive director of Social Workers for Justice, notes that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a budget reconciliation bill that was signed into law on July 4, 2025, makes expansive changes to Medicaid, among other priorities. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that, as a result, 16 million people will lose their health insurance by 2034.

“There’s a lot of grief, anxiety, and fear,” says Arianna Galligher, LISW-S, director of the Stress, Trauma and Resilience (STAR) Program and Gabbe Wellbeing Office at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. “Those most directly impacted by today’s political climate are at risk of feeling isolated and struggling with depression. With change and uncertainty, many are feeling overwhelmed and vulnerable. There’s a lot of disillusionment, too.”

Emotional Impact
Even for those not directly affected by what is happening within national and state governments, it is hard to escape the political, whether witnessing the impact on others or being weighed down by the knowledge of what is occurring.

Alyssa Meixelsperger, MSW, LCSW, CADC, a therapist in Chicago, says that “The political climate comes up daily in conversations with my clients. People are feeling scared, overwhelmed, and powerless, and because it is nearly impossible to escape or avoid hearing and talking about current events, I am seeing noticeable differences in people’s well-being and functioning. Clients are struggling to sleep, feeling strain in relationships, isolating themselves, and are having difficulty stopping cycles of worry.”

Michelle Comery, LCSW, a therapist with The Keely Group in New York, agrees. “I definitely feel like it comes up more in my sessions for sure. When I’m working with individuals and couples, usually in their 20s through 40s, it’d be on things like identity, life transitions, and career concerns,” she explains. Instead, it’s politics, and “it comes up as existential dread. There are worries about their futures, the environment, and, especially for my female patients, the reservations about having children and starting a family. I hear and see a lot more despair.”

Comery, who works with couples, as well as individuals, adds that while most of her couple clients/patients are on the same page politically, many are struggling with extended family relationships. Navigating family situations in which people have differing political views can cause conflict and stress.

Meixelsperger adds, “Many people are realizing that they may have irreconcilable differences in values from their friends and family members and are having to navigate those relationships ending.”

Providing Support
How a social worker provides support to their clients will, again, vary with the individual, as well as the setting. For some, they will have to focus on practical needs first. If services change, lessen, or end, many individuals and families will need to determine how to move forward. Their social worker can play an integral part in that plan.

For example, Mondros notes that social workers serving individuals who are undocumented can help their clients figure out safety plans and talk to their children. “The same thing with justice-impacted communities. Talk to them about how to plan for the end of services in these areas. Get clients to begin to think about being active themselves,” she suggests. “Clinical services aren’t just about being in your head. They’re about helping people to solve problems.”

For clients in short-term settings who are struggling with the political climate, Galligher recommends starting with “kindness and compassion. Whatever can be done to convey caring and acceptance, and to establish the environment as a safe place, needs to be the focus. We have to address the emergent needs as best we can, while simultaneously working to see the person’s situation in a broader context. In so doing, we can serve as a conduit to community-based programs and resources designed to meet longer term needs.”

In a longer term, more therapeutic setting, a social worker will work to address whatever feelings exist, such as anxiety or despair. However, Meixelsperger says, it does take a different approach than usual. “Helping individuals navigate political strain is different from the therapy that I otherwise provide because there aren’t necessarily symptoms that we are trying to alleviate, like when a client comes in with something like depression or OCD,” she says. “Therapy that focuses on political strain aims to simply provide support and manage stress levels, rather than focusing on specific diagnoses or symptoms.”

Comery says that she often turns to grounding techniques—breathwork and mindfulness. Those, however, can only go so far when a patient is really struggling. “For some of them, their rights or the rights of the people they know and love are at stake,” she emphasizes, highlighting the importance of not diminishing the fear and uncertainty. “I think for the most part, when people are seeking therapy, it’s about providing that space to talk about it and release some of that fear and tension.”

Galligher adds that “Exploration of mechanisms to restore their sense of agency around things that are within their sphere of control or influence is key in providing effective support.”

The Social Worker
Through it all, no matter the setting, the social worker must be aware of themselves and how they show up to a session/meeting. After all, the social worker is also in the same political reality and may or may not agree with the views of their clients.

In many ways, it is easiest when the social worker and client are on the same page politically. It helps open doors. “What I found in my dissertation,” Bulow says, “is when politics were generally aligned between the therapist and client, there was an opportunity for increased intimacy, to enhance the feeling of the client feeling felt. That’s easier [to achieve] when politics were a little more aligned, because the therapist didn’t have a sense of having to hold back.” However, she notes, “There’s a danger of missing things, a danger of feeling so aligned and getting drawn into a conversation about agreeing on something that you miss something individualized about that person and that client. There’s a risk of skipping over something.”

Sharing that alignment, then, requires the social worker to find the right combination of being open and setting boundaries. “I’m mindful about my own feelings and how much space they take up in the room,” Comery says. “In my own supervision, that’s when I get to process my feelings more. In sessions, I think it’s important that the focus ultimately is on my patients. I think it’s a balancing act of joining with them in their feelings and trying to remind them what they’re working towards, what their ultimate goals are.”

Social workers also need to be prepared to work with clients who do not have the same political views. That may mean a client who is on the opposite end of the spectrum. But just as likely is having a client who closely but does not completely align with the social worker’s views. No matter what, there is a lot to consider when politics comes up in session, and the therapist must remember that they are there to listen and respond as a therapist.

Bulow says the social worker must approach the client-therapist relationship as they would with any client who has thoughts, ideas, and experiences that are challenging for the therapist. “This is no different from that. You handle it in a similar fashion, and that’s probably totally individualized. There may be moments where a therapist has difficulty or trouble exercising restraint; they have to work that out,” she says. “Maybe not every therapist is the best fit for every client, but I don’t think that someone having a different political viewpoint or stance or ideology rules out a dyad from being able to work well. But it will probably require something different from the therapist than when [their views] are highly aligned.”

Self-Care and Advocacy
The social worker must also do their part to take care of themselves and their needs so that they can adequately serve their clients. This means, as always, being aware of the potential for burnout but also finding ways to be meaningfully active.

“I have found it most important to maintain strong boundaries in various areas of my life. For example, keeping a strong work-life balance, staying informed but not doomscrolling, limiting social media use, and acting in alignment with my personal values,” Meixelsperger says. “It is easy to feel powerless in this political environment, but I have found comfort and strength by engaging in advocacy and education when possible.”

And it is that engagement, Mondros says, that is desperately needed from social workers today. “We are in the same boat as the communities we work with. We are not protected differently from they are. The time to wake up and become active is this very moment.”

— Sue Coyle, MSW is a freelance writer in the Philadelphia suburbs.