Yes, the election may actually be hurting your mental health
If mental health is wealth, then this election will require dipping into your savings. Brett Ford , associate professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, likens politics to a form of chronic stress and Nov. 5 marks yet another high-stakes presidential election with ex-president Donald Trump on the ballot.
"Chronic stress involves long lasting, pervasive conditions that typically evoke negative emotions and feelings of distress," said Ford. "Definitionally, that sounds a lot like day-to-day politics to me for many people. And one of the useful things about viewing politics through the lens of chronic stress is that people have been researching chronic stress for a while. We can take some of the things that we've learned about chronic stress and bring it into the realm of political chronic stress."
"We've learned that politics regularly evokes negative emotions for people regardless of your political ideology or party. We know that the more intensely negative you feel about politics, just [on] a day-to-day basis [and] not even in the lead up to an election, the worse your mental health [and] the more physical health symptoms you feel."
Ford's recent research , published in an American Psychological Association Journal, observed voters across parties and noted how personal politics felt to them. She says there are consistent patterns showing election-related stress hitting younger and more liberal people harder. And the study found associations between politics and daily life ranging from financial livelihood to moral convictions.
While Ford's findings could not confirm racial and gender identity as factoring into increased political stress, she says discussions about racial and gender discrimination can often feel political and can lead to chronic stress-like tension. And unlike other stress factors, politics is so broad and far reaching that it cannot be resolved alone even by the most ambitious individuals.
Robert Klitzman , professor of psychiatry and sociomedical sciences at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, says there remain distinctions between political stress and chronic stress. After all, the tangible feeling can be quite valid.
"A lot of people are feeling stress in the past few days, weeks [and] months, because of the upcoming election," said Klitzman. "And it's different from chronic stress which is always going on, and part of it is because the stress here is, in some ways, an existential threat. It's a threat to many of our lives, depending on [how] the election goes. It's threats to our democracy, and it's a feeling [of] not being able necessarily to control the outcome that's leading a lot of people to feel a great amount of angst and distress."
In practice, fear and anxiety uniquely stem from this presidential election according to observations by Dilice Robertson , a clinical associate professor at the NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing. And the impacts certainly single out nonwhite people.
"If we talk about social determinants of health , all of this combines into this storm of negative outcomes for people of color," said Robertson. "There's been this target on people of color, especially in New York [with] social media [and] ads being utilized. Conversations among lay people are being utilized to continue to perpetuate this misinformation, to sway people in direction of who to vote for.
"The problem is in this prioritization of people of color, they're not identifying what the potential outcomes are going to be when the decision is made to vote for one candidate or the other."
Yet Robertson believes the root causes for such anxieties did not start with Trump in 2016. Getting called an anti-Black slur when she arrived in America decades ago informed on how endemic these issues really are.
Political stress can also compound existing mental health conditions, says Klitzman.
"If one is depressed to start, one may ... focus even more on the negative potential outcomes," he said. "Of course, we don't know what's going to happen in the election. And my guess is, even after Election Day, there may be quite a bit of uncertainty for several days ... similarly, anxiety can spiral.
"And so if you're feeling anxious to begin with ... this anxiety could feed into that anxiety about the election, that is about the future [of] the country, and about worries about ways that might affect one's own life. And those anxieties can perpetuate each other. They can become mutually reinforcing in a negative way."
So how can people chill out about politics without downplaying their importance? The experts all suggest cutting down on social media intake, and being picky on what does get through the filter.
Less politically-engaged people experience less election-related stress according to Ford. But she fears prioritizing mental health can seem at odds with the foundations of democracy, like civic participation and social action. Ford and Robertson both believe acceptance can reduce election-related stress without compromising political engagement.
"We use the term radical acceptance sometimes, where you can only be responsible for what you can do," said Robertson. "If you are able to exercise that civic duty and vote, be comfortable in knowing that you contributed, and then whatever is outside of your locus of control being OK with the outcome, because you cannot change anything about that.
"Radical acceptance looks like [no matter the] result, that you have the responsibility of how you will manage yourself and the people who are closest to you in your household and your family. And so radical acceptance [means] you did what you could. You are responsible for that, and that is it."
Yet Ford also believes reframing the gravity of elections to work toward a better future not only increases civic engagement, but also predicts better mental health outcomes. People feel better without dismissing veritable political concerns by fostering "socially-oriented positive emotions" like compassion and inspiration.
"Those are also really powerful motivators of action that don't require us to make this situation feel less severe in our head," said Ford. "It can be that, and it can also be an opportunity to come together, to take action, to build community, [and] to engage in compassionate, ethical ways toward each other.
"And to me, that is a really promising pathway forward. It doesn't require us to take away our anxiety, which is really motivating." Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member who writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting .
