The Iran war arrived in American therapy offices within days of the first strikes. Mental health professionals report a surge in clients presenting with acute war anxiety — sleeplessness, doom-scrolling compulsions, intrusive thoughts about escalation — layered on top of a system that was already failing to meet demand. [1]

The American Psychological Association reported in March that more than half of VA medical centers face psychologist shortages, with many vacancies going unfilled even before the conflict began. [2] The War Horse found VA psychologists burning out under caseloads that leave no room for the new wave of anxiety the war has generated. [3] The pipeline is inadequate: rising demand meets a workforce that was contracting before the first missiles flew.

The anxiety is not confined to veterans or military families. A Michigan Medicine psychiatrist noted that politically induced stress — already elevated through years of polarization — has spiked to levels clinicians describe as qualitatively different from election-cycle anxiety. [4] War, unlike elections, has no end date on the calendar. That open-endedness, therapists say, is what makes it hardest to treat.