The election of President Donald Trump seems to have sparked a wave of emotions, from early-morning Twitter rants by the man himself to American outrage for and against the administration’s actions. But according to a new research article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the most recent presidential election could be taking a toll on the nation’s health.
In the aftermath of the election, some Americans could be at higher risk for experiencing stress, premature births, disease and premature death, according to the paper penned by a team at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Massachusetts General Hospital/McLean Hospital.
The team based its predictions on a body of research examining the health effects of presidential campaigns and elections, including an American Psychological Association survey released earlier this year that found U.S. stress increased overall for the first time in a decade between August 2016 and January 2017. A common thread among the studies? Marginalized groups (i.e., minorities, immigrants and Muslims, for example) are most susceptible to these risks.
In the six months following the attacks of 9/11, for instance, California-based Arab-American women experienced an increased risk of having low birth weight babies or preterm births compared to the prior six months — a risk unique to that demographic.
And racial animosity in white Americans went up after President Barack Obama’s first election, followed by a proliferation of hate websites and anti-Obama activity on social media, research has found.
“We talk about the increased hostility in the United States, some of which can be dated back not to the Trump campaign but to [the] Obama election,” author David R. Williams, a professor at the Harvard T. H. Chan School and Harvard University, told U.S. News. Williams wrote the article with Dr. Morgan Medlock, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital/McLean Hospital.
So just how long can we expect these heightened health risks to last? It depends. If people perceive themselves as ongoing targets of hostility, then the consequences could persist indefinitely, Williams says. If it’s more of a short-term issue, he expects to see a reduction in the effects.
But it’s not all gloom and doom, Williams says: When campaigns give a voice to a group of disenfranchised people, it can be a boon for their health, at least in the short term.
“Such associations have been observed among black South Africans at the time of Nelson Mandela’s 1994 election, among black Americans during Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign, and among Hispanic and black Americans when Barack Obama was nominated for President in 2008,” according to the article. “Thus, increases in psychological well-being, pride, and hope for the future are likely to be evident among Donald Trump supporters.”
All this, of course, begs the question: Would Trump supporters have faced these same health effects if Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton had won the election?
“Certainly they would have been disappointed,” Williams said. “The extent to which it might have been to the same depth, I would not speculate because it’s not clear.”
If patients are experiencing post-election “side effects,” health care professionals can help by suggesting psychotherapy or appropriate medications, Williams and Medlock say. Another helpful step could be for clinicians and health care organizations to “take a strong stance against hate crimes, discriminatory political rhetoric, and incivility,” they add.
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Experts: How Donald Trump’s Presidential Win Could Impact Your Health originally appeared on usnews.com
