I recently received some unexpected good news from an old friend I hadn't heard from in a while. She had been feeling down in the dumps and dealing with what sounded to my untrained ear like a bout of depression. But now she sounded positively upbeat, describing all of the things she was getting done around her home and some upcoming plans she has in the works. I asked about her secret to success and she very simply stated that she had "turned off the election." She had shut down cable news as much as possible, worked on projects around her property, and visited friends. When the weather was bad, she watched old, classic films on DVD.

It only took a moment for a light to go off over my head. Cable news is currently little more than an endless series of interviews, town halls, and rallies, each demanding hours of endless analysis about how this or that policy proposal will spell the end of the world. My friend confided that if she had to sit through one more lecture about how this will be "the most important election of our lifetimes," she would probably suffer a gagging fit. So she just stopped.

I haven't thrown in the towel yet because this is my job. But election anxiety is a real thing and analysts have been tracking it for a while now. This year is worse than most and it was already raising concerns early this summer. (USA Today)

"I'm really trying to do a better job of controlling it," said Kreck, 35, a professional gardener and married mother of two.

The registered Republican from Ellsworth Maine doesn't intend to vote for either major party candidate but between this weekend's violence, the "vitriolic" language of the campaigns and the stakes for issues like the economy, reproductive rights and immigration ‒ she can feel her blood pressure rise every time she thinks about the election.

In an election-related survey this spring, more than 40% of Americans reported signs of anxiety or depression. A similar percentage say the news and social media coverage of the election have them feeling even more anxious than usual, according to the GeneSight Mental Health Monitor poll conducted May 8-15 by Myriad Genetics,

The fact that this election cycle has simply turned out to be so weird isn't helping. The news cycle continues to ebb and flow with no real sense of clarity being added. With so much supposedly critical information coming out on an hourly basis, you would think something would be nudging this race in one direction or the other by now. And yet there's nothing but the next one point slip in this or that demographic and the candidates scramble yet again to patch up the supposed leak. It's no wonder that some people are looking for a way to unplug for a while. We could probably all do with a bit of quiet time.