An American study conducted in 2017 and 2020 shows that following political news can cause stress, fatigue, anger and cause sleep disturbances.
- Two studies, conducted in 2017 and 2020 in the United States, show that following politics causes fatigue, feelings of anger, loss of temper and compulsive behaviors in 40% of Americans. It is also responsible for suicidal thoughts in 5% of Americans.
- People really involved in politics and knowing the workings well, however, seem less affected than others.
With less than 100 days to go before the presidential election, are you really sure you want to witness the invectives between the candidates, get informed on social networks and follow the polls?
If the answer is yes, expect it to affect your health! In any case, this is the conclusion reached by Kevin Smith, a political scientist from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, who has made the study of the impact of the political climate on the health of citizens a subject of research. .
In 2017, a few weeks after Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, he published a first study in which he analyzed the effects of the political climate on the physical, social, mental and emotional health of Americans. Five years later, he comes to the same conclusion: all political contests are harmful to our health, and even the change of party in power has not helped.
In a new article published in the journal PLOS ONE, he explains that he repeated the same 32-question survey twice in 2020 – two weeks before the election, and two weeks after. The results show that a large portion of American adults blame politics for causing them stress, loss of sleep, fractured relationships and more.
Stress, anger and sleep disturbances
In more detail, the 2020 results show that around 40% of Americans rate politics as a significant source of stress. Furthermore, between a fifth and a third of adults (or 50 to 85 million people) blamed politics for causing fatigue, feelings of anger, loss of temper and triggering compulsive behaviors. One in four adults said they had seriously considered moving because of politics.
“This second round of surveys demonstrates quite conclusively that the first survey did not stand out – that what we found in this first survey is really indicative of what many Americans are going through, emphasizes Kevin Smith. It is also unpleasant to think that during this time nothing has changed. A large portion of American adults genuinely perceive that politics takes a heavy toll on their social, psychological, and even physical health.”
A danger to democracy
Even more disturbing, 5% of Americans polled accuse politics of having suicidal thoughts. A stable figure compared to 2017.
The results show that the adults most likely to be negatively affected by politics were young, more often Democratic-leaning, politically interested, and politically engaged.
For Professor Smith, these results are very worrying for democracy, because they testify to a possible disengagement of citizens in terms of political decisions. “If people consider politics to be so divisive, and potentially a threat to their own well-being, they will say ‘to hell with me, I don’t want to get involved’. But democracies depend on participation. We need of civically engaged citizens.”
So how do you mitigate these effects? For Professor Smith, those really involved in politics have more resources to fight against its harmful health effects. “People who were more politically informed were less likely to report these negative outcomes”explains the researcher, who continues: “I would really like to study the following question: if you take someone who is interested in politics, but does not know much about it, and give him information about the political system, that would it reduce the negative costs of politics? This could be a positive outcome of civic education that has never been considered before.”
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