The Effects of Recent Polarized Elections on Mental Health

Policy Points Researchers investigate how recent elections in the United States have influenced mental health, especially among political- and policy-based election losers. The previous two presidential elections worsened the self-reported mental health of Americans on average. Likely partisan election losers and those who had the most to lose in terms of health policy were even more likely to have their mental health affected by the results of elections. As American politics has become increasingly polarized and the perceived stakes of elections have loomed larger in recent years, elections have become a source of worsening mental health for Americans. CONTEXT: Politics is increasingly important to many Americans. Yet little is known about how the increasing centrality of politics affects Americans' mental health. This work aimed to evaluate how recent polarized elections have influenced Americans' mental health. METHODS: To investigate this question, we compared online search interest in politically related mental health issues and self-reported mental health data. Analyses explored changes before and after election days in 2020 and 2024. The two outcome variables were aggregate Google search interest in politics-related mental health issues and individual responses to the following item from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS): ''Now thinking about your mental health, which includes stress, depression, and problems with emotions, for how many days during the past 30 days was your mental health not good? With BRFSS, we compared differential changes for likely Democrats and Republicans using multiple proxy measures and for those with health policy interest in the election. FINDINGS: The 2020 and 2024 presidential elections substantially increased interest in politics-related mental health issues online. The 2020 election led to just under 0.2 additional days of poor mental health (P < .05), and the 2024 election led to just under 0.5 additional days of poorer mental health (P < .05). Likely losing partisans and those who stood to lose out from Trump's reelection in terms of health policy were found to drive most of this relationship, with just under 1 full additional day of poorer mental health for each group. CONCLUSIONS: The stakes of elections in this polarized era of American politics are worsening the mental health of Americans. Additional resources may be necessary to allow therapists and clinicians to navigate additional care-seeking surrounding and following elections.