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Many Americans stressed out postelection – on both sides of the aisle

February 9, 2017 at 5:37PM

Many Americans are experiencing hyper-vigiliance, experts said, after the election. Said Farha Abbasi, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Michigan State University and director of the Muslim Mental Health Conference, “In everyone’s minds, you are consciously and unconsciously looking for safe places right now,” (Bebeto Matthews • Associated Press/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Anxiously checking the news? Obsessing over the president's latest tweet? Stressed about what's coming next?

Take a number. Experts in mental health are seeing high stress over the daily drumbeat of news — not surprisingly, especially among opponents of Donald Trump. While many people reported feeling anxious during the campaign season — more than half of Americans, on both sides of the aisle were stressed — the feelings haven't subsided in the early days of the new administration, as some thought they might.

Many Americans are experiencing "hyper-vigilance," a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder, "this feeling like you have to stay on edge all the time, waiting for the next thing to drop," said Vaile Wright, director of research and special projects at the American Psychological Association.

"Many people were expecting and hoping for a different outcome," said Anthony Rostain, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. "But even if it didn't go their way," he said, they wanted it "to be settled and go back to normal."

Therapists say the high anxiety levels remain.

"To be a Mexican-American right now, how can you not feel degraded?" said Keith Humphreys, referring to President Trump's proposal for the southern border wall with Mexico. Humphreys is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine and former senior policy adviser at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy during the Obama administration.

"We're feeling very scared, emotionally raw, very vulnerable," said Farha Abbasi, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Michigan State University and director of the Muslim Mental Health Conference. "In everyone's minds, you are consciously and unconsciously looking for safe places right now," she said, noting that many Muslims feel the world at large is now unwelcoming. And many are feeling pressure from two directions at once, she said: "The moderate Muslim is being targeted from extreme fundamentalists on one side and then being held responsible for the actions of those few."

People are also experiencing "vicarious trauma," girding themselves to potentially become the next target, said Tamara Brown, a professor and dean at Prairie View A&M University's College of Juvenile Justice and Psychology. "An African-American man said to me, 'If President Trump can do this for the Muslims, what does that mean for me in an executive order tomorrow?' "

The divisions are rupturing families as people realize that values they thought were shared are not. "People are looking at loved ones with different eyes," Brown said.

Tara Well, an associate professor of psychology at Barnard College, is seeing "emotional contagion."

"An emotion catches, like fear or anger," Well said. This happens on a massive scale through social media, she said, noting a 2013 study that found that "emotions expressed by others on Facebook influence our own emotions."

Even Trump supporters worry about how policy changes could affect them. For many, concerns about health care are front and center.

With talk of privatizing Medicare, a policy advocated by House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Health and Human Services nominee Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., resurfacing, "a lot of patients and geriatric individuals ask, 'What's going to happen to our health care?' " said J.R. Green, chief executive officer at Senior Life Solutions, which provides hospital-based geriatric outpatient behavioral health care in rural communities through 41 programs in 15 states.

Many depend on Medicare and are worried-with reason, he said, that privatization could mean a significant reduction in the kind of care that's available. The president has said he opposes privatizing Medicare.

About 60 percent of respondents to a survey by TalkSpace are dealing with some form of postelection stress, and 25 percent are "very stressed." At least, they were on Inauguration Day, according to the poll by the messaging app, which that connects patients with therapists, in partnership with HealthMap researchers at Boston Children's Hospital. Judging by the events of the past three weeks, it's hard to imagine that Americans, whether friend or foe of the president, are much calmer now.

In fact, while 71 percent of survey respondents who supported Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said they were living with high stress levels, one in five Donald Trump supporters reported stress, too. All this unease or fear —evident in a raft of nationwide protests — is seeping into people's therapy sessions as well.

"It's across the board," TalkSpace co-founder and CEO Oren Frank said. "It's definitely topic No. 1, because of the uncertainty and unpredictability."

Mental health experts say stressed Americans should take the long view.

"Humans are resilient," Penn's Rostain said. "We've solved problems before, and we'll solve this one."