Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Trump Anxiety - 2016 elections and mental health - News Review

Trump Anxiety In Brief

Trump Anxiety



2016 elections and mental health

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It's Actually Fine for Doctors to Speculate About Trump's Mental Health - Slate Magazine
Wed, 12 Oct 2016 23:24:15 GMT

Slate Magazine



It's Actually Fine for Doctors to Speculate About Trump's Mental Health
Slate Magazine
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump holds a campaign rally on October 10, 2016 in Wilkes ... While do-it-yourself diagnosing of a certain presidential candidate has become a cottage industry in this electionthe consensus about Donald Trump ...

2016 elections and mental health - Minneapolis Star Tribune

elections - Google News




2016 elections and mental health
Minneapolis Star Tribune
The choice of voting for a candidate transcends politics. A presidential candidate represents a dominant set of beliefs, social interests and philosophies; however, in the contestation of major concerns, the rest are often ignored. Thus, here I take ...

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The Opinion Pages | OP-ED COLUMNIST





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A Trump campaign event in Ohio last week. CreditDamon Winter/The New York Times

We’ve had a tutorial on worry this year. The election campaign isn’t really about policy proposals, issue solutions or even hope. It’s led by two candidates who arouse gargantuan anxieties, fear and hatred in their opponents.
As a result, some mental health therapists are reporting that three-quarters of their patients are mentioning significant election-related anxiety. An American Psychological Association study found that more than half of all Americans are very or somewhat stressed by this race.
Of course, there are good and bad forms of anxiety — the kind that warns you about legitimate dangers and the kind that spirals into dark and self-destructive thoughts.
In his book “Worrying,” Francis O’Gorman notes how quickly the good kind of anxiety can slide into the dark kind. “Worry is circular,” he writes. It may start with a concrete anxiety: Did I lock the back door? Is this headache a stroke? “And it has a nasty habit of taking off on its own, of getting out of hand, of spawning thoughts that are related to the original worry and which make it worse.”
That’s what’s happening this year. Anxiety is coursing through American society. It has become its own destructive character on the national stage.
Worry alters the atmosphere of the mind. It shrinks your awareness of the present and your ability to enjoy what’s around you right now. It cycles possible bad futures around in your head and forces you to live in dreadful future scenarios, 90 percent of which will never come true.
Pretty soon you are seeing the world through a dirty windshield. Worry dims every sunrise and amplifies mistrust. A mounting tide of anxiety makes people angrier about society and more darkly pessimistic about the possibility of changing it. Spiraling worry is the perverted underside of rationality.
This being modern polarized America, worry seems to come in two flavors.
Educated-class anxiety can often be characterized as a feeling overabundant of options without a core of convicting purpose. It’s worth noting that rich countries are more anxious than poorer ones. According to the World Health Organization, 18.2 percent of Americans report chronic anxiety while only 3.3 percent of Nigerians do.
Today, when you hear affluent people express worry, it’s usually related to the fear of missing out, and the dizziness of freedom. The affluent often feel besieged by busyness and plagued by a daily excess of choices. At the same time, there is a pervasive cosmic unease, the anxiety that they don’t quite understand the meaning of life, or have not surrendered to some all-encompassing commitment that would bring coherence and peace.
Many affluent people use money to buy privacy, and so cut themselves off from both the deep relationships that could give them purpose and the neighborly support systems that could hold them up if things go south.
This election has also presented members of the educated class with an awful possibility: that their pleasant social strata may rest on unstable molten layers of anger, bigotry and instability. How could this guy Trump get even 40 percent of the votes? America may be not quite the country we thought it was.
Among the less educated, anxiety flows from and inflames a growing sense that the structures of society are built for the exploitation of people like themselves. Everything is rigged; the rulers are malevolent and corrupt.
Last weekend’s “Black Jeopardy” skit on “Saturday Night Live” did a beautiful job of showing how this sensation overlaps among both progressive African-Americans and reactionary Trumpians.
It is a well-established fact that people who experience social exclusion have a tendency to slide toward superstitious and conspiratorial thinking. People who feel exploited by, and invisible to, those at the commanding heights of society are not going to worry if their candidate can’t pass a fact-check test. They just want someone who can share their exclusion and give them a better story.
Anxiety changes people. We’ve seen a level of thuggery this election cycle that is without precedent in recent American history. Some of the anti-Trump demonstrators seem more interested in violence than politics. Some of the Trumpians are savage.
David French wrote a shocking essay for National Review describing the appalling online abuse he suffered because of his anti-Trump stance. His anonymous assailants Photoshopped pictures of his daughter’s face in a gas chamber and left GIFs of grisly executions on his wife’s blog.
Some of the things that have made us vulnerable to this wave of anxiety are not going away — the narratives of fear, conspiracy and the immobilizing stress. America’s culture may be permanently changed for the worse.
But the answer to worry is the same as the answer to fear: direct action. If the next president starts enacting a slew of actual policies, then at least we can argue about concrete plans, rather than vague apocalyptic moods.
Furthermore, action takes us out of ourselves. Worry, like drama, is all about the self. As O’Gorman puts it, the worrier is the opposite of a lighthouse: “He doesn’t give out energy for the benefit of others. He absorbs energy at others’ cost.”

If you’re worrying, you’re spiraling into your own narcissistic pool. But concrete plans and actions thrust us into the daily fact of other people’s lives. This campaign will soon be over, and governing, thank God, will soon return.
Hakuna matata.
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Selected Links - added on 10.26.16

Election 2016: Politics affects campus issues - Yale Daily News (blog)
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Election 2016: Politics affects campus issues
Yale Daily News (blog)
While there was broad support for increasing mental health resources and improving Yale's career services, views on controversial issues pertaining to race and class were correlated with respondents' political ideologies. “I think these issues are at ...

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Because of #Election2016, Facebook, Twitter stink now - USA TODAY

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Because of #Election2016, Facebook, Twitter stink now
USA TODAY
“There are some countries where the election process is limited time wise. Ours is, too, to some extent but probably not enough,” said Kellams, medical director at Eskenazi Health Midtown Mental Health here. “It's taken a year out of our life, starting ...

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Why Trump Voters' 'Economic Anxiety' Isn't Just Secretly 'Racism' - Fortune

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Why Trump Voters' 'Economic Anxiety' Isn't Just Secretly 'Racism'
Fortune
Yet there may be a third explanation for what's moving Trump's voters: it's not economic anxiety or racial resentment, it's both. For that view, see The Populist Explosion, the new book by John B. Judis. Writing from the left, with a qualified ...

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Mental healthcare and the 2016 election - The Hill (blog)

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Mental healthcare and the 2016 election
The Hill (blog)
Approximately 1 in 5 adults and adolescents experience a diagnosable mental illness in a given year. From my perspective as a medical sociologist conducting national research with working Americans and local research with women who cycle through ...

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2016 elections and mental health - Minneapolis Star Tribune

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NG News

Topeka Capital Journal

2016 elections and mental health
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Thus, here I take one such issue, which nonetheless is the reality of thousands of Americans who suffer from it: mental health. Below, I will explore the policies on mental health issues from both candidates. According to the National Alliance on ...
Advocates of Kansas' mental health courts say lives improved, taxpayer dollars savedTopeka Capital Journal
Students perform poetry for mental healthDaily Trojan Online

Guest Column: For mental health, vote for NielsenThe Daily Iowan
Models for Mental Health returning for third year

NG News
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No, It's Not Just You: This Election Is Stressing People Out - KPBS

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KPBS

No, It's Not Just You: This Election Is Stressing People Out
KPBS
The 2016 election is taking a toll on American's mental health. A survey this month from the American Psychological Association found the election is a very or somewhat significant source of stress for 52 percent of American adults. Both Democrats and ...
APA Survey Reveals 2016 Presidential Election Source of Significant Stress for More Than Half of AmericansAmerican Psychological Association

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The 7 Best Ways to Beat Election Stress - TIME

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TIME

The 7 Best Ways to Beat Election Stress
TIME
For many Americans, that day can't come soon enough—for the sake of their mental health. A recent survey from the American Psychological Association (APA) found that 52% of American adults say the 2016 election is a somewhat significant—or very ...
Does negative campaigning affect mental health?York Dispatch
You're Not Alone: This Election Is Seriously Stressing Everyone OutGlamour

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Talking to Your Therapist About Election Anxiety - New York Times

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New York Times

Talking to Your Therapist About Election Anxiety
New York Times
It has been described as one of the most contentious, tawdry and angry presidential elections in history. And it's taking a toll on our mental health. “I've been in private practice for 30 years, and I have never seen patients have such strong ...

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Survey Shows Voters Getting Stressed Out By Election 2016 - CBS Local

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CBS Local

Survey Shows Voters Getting Stressed Out By Election 2016
CBS Local
And the campaign is triggering emotions for just about every group. According to the survey, the election stress cuts across demographics and party lines. The anxiety is so bad for some they are turning off their computers and phones and turning away ...

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America's election is giving the world some serious anxiety - Washington Post

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Washington Post

America's election is giving the world some serious anxiety
Washington Post
Making predictions three weeks before the U.S. election is risky, but the likeliest bet right now is that the center will hold in American politics and Hillary Clinton will be elected president. That's important for lots of reasons, the biggest of ...

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Donald Trump Is Triggering - Cosmopolitan.com

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Cosmopolitan.com

Donald Trump Is Triggering
Cosmopolitan.com
The dizziness and brain-buzzing I feel watching Trump are symptoms I recognize as symptoms of an anxiety attack. In him, I ... Trump used two common gaslighting techniques, as outlined by the National Domestic Violence Hotline, in that response. The ...

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Donald Trump Is a Human Trigger - Slate Magazine

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Slate Magazine

Donald Trump Is a Human Trigger
Slate Magazine
According to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, the weekend after the release of the Trump tape saw a 33 percent increase in people turning to its National Sexual Assault Hotline for support. Traffic to the group's ... Her clients, she says ...
Trump as Trigger: How His Misogyny and Hatred Are Literally Causing Millions Mental and Physical PainAlterNet

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Are you struggling with election anxiety syndrome? - Inman.com

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Are you struggling with election anxiety syndrome?
Inman.com
Election anxiety syndrome (EAS) has gripped the country, destroying friendships, causing major rifts in families and severing business relationships. If you're in the grip of EAS, you can overcome it. The 2016 presidential election has been unlike ...

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Taking Trump voters' concerns seriously means listening to what they're actually saying - Vox

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Vox

Taking Trump voters' concerns seriously means listening to what they're actually saying
Vox
I can remember literally no one in 2012 dwelling on the importance of taking the concerns of Mitt Romney voters seriously, even though they made up a considerably larger share of the population than Trump supporters. No one talks about taking the ...

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Sexual Assault Hotline Calls Up in Wake of Donald Trump Allegations - ABC News

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Sexual Assault Hotline Calls Up in Wake of Donald Trump Allegations
ABC News
With sexual assault accusations against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump continuing to make headlines, the sexual assault hotline run by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) has seen a spike in calls. Starting last Saturday ...

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How To Deal With Election Anxiety05:15 - Here And Now

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Here And Now

How To Deal With Election Anxiety05:15
Here And Now
Supporters gather for a chance to see Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence at a rally in Johnstown, Pa., on Oct. 6, 2016. (Jeff Swensen/Getty Images). This election season has gotten many voters fired up — some so much so that now they're ...

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Health and the 2016 Election: Implications for Women - Kaiser Family Foundation

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Kaiser Family Foundation

Health and the 2016 Election: Implications for Women
Kaiser Family Foundation
For women, a key provision of the ACA has been the requirement that all new private insurance plans and Medicaid expansion programs cover certain categories of benefits, including maternity care, mental health, and prescription drugs, that were ...
What Bipartisan Opportunities Will The Next Congress And President Have To Improve Health Policy?Health Affairs (blog)
Here's where Donald Trump stands on healthcareBusiness Insider
2016 Employer Health Benefits SurveyKaiser Family Foundation
Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance - State of Wisconsin
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Poll Shows Male Trump Supporters Feel Persecuted - The Atlantic - The Atlantic

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The Atlantic

Poll Shows Male Trump Supporters Feel Persecuted - The Atlantic
The Atlantic
Several recent surveys suggest that when men feel persecuted, they turn to Donald Trump for affirmation.

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