Michelle Obama’s voting initiative teams with Headspace to help voters manage mental health

When We All Vote, the voter registration and engagement organization launched by Michelle Obama, and the mental health platform Headspace are teaming up “to help voters manage their mental health throughout the 2024 election season.”

“People need mental health support during this time of uncertainty now more than ever,” When We All Vote said in a statement announcing the partnership on Thursday, citing a poll released in May by the American Psychiatric Association that found 73 percent of Americans are “particularly anxious” about the election.

The alliance between Obama’s nonpartisan effort — which the former first lady launched in 2018 — and Headspace will include a voter registration portal, an “election season survival guide” that features free audio and video mindfulness exercises and an election stress assessment.

Headspace will also debut a section in its app dubbed “Politics Without Panic” that will include meditations “intended to help voters leverage stress-relieving tools needed to stay calm and focused.”

Obama said in an interview earlier this year that fears about the 2024 White House race were keeping her up at night. 

“I am terrified about what could possibly happen,” Obama said in January.

The “Light we Carry”author has said she struggled with “low-grade depression” in 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. 

“That was during a time when a lot of hard stuff was going on,” Obama, 60, told People magazine in 2021. 

“Depression is understandable during these times. I needed to acknowledge what I was going through, because a lot of times we feel like we have to cover that part of ourselves up, that we always have to rise above and look as if we’re not paddling hard underneath the water,” she said. 

“This is what mental health is. You have highs and lows,” she added at the time.