Researchers explore disparities in mental health impacts caused by the racist, xenophobic rhetoric espoused by Donald Trump during the contentious election
The 2016 election of former U.S. President Donald Trump was a highly contentious political event fraught with racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric that led to negative changes in mental health across several race/ethnic populations, according to a recent study conducted by University of California, Irvine public health researchers.
Corresponding author and assistant professor of health, society, and behavior Brittany N. Morey, MPH, PhD of the UCI Program in Public Health said, “We found that the group that experienced the most increase in poor self-reported mental health were English-speaking Latinx who were living in states where the majority voted for Trump in the 2016 election.”
Findings were published in the journal Social Science and Medicine.
In November 2016 and February 2017 – the time periods immediately following the 2016 election and 2017 inauguration – English-speaking Latinx adults living in Trump-majority states reported 1 to 2 more poor mental health days in that past month than expected.
“This supports our hypothesis that the election of former President Trump was a stressful event that caused population-level mental health effects among those who may be most severely impacted by racist and xenophobic sociopolitical environments,” Morey said. “We call this phenomenon ‘symbolic disempowerment’ and our study shows that elections themselves are social determinants of health.”
Morey and her collaborators did not observe the same pattern for English-speaking Latinx who were living in states that voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, which may indicate a protective effect of living in Democratic-leaning states.
Interestingly, researchers did see higher than average poor mental health days among white populations living in states that primarily voted for Clinton, which indicated that white populations in more progressive states displayed higher levels of stress and anxiety as a result of the 2016 election.
“We also found lower than average poor mental health days among Spanish-speaking Latinx populations in states that voted for Trump, which was surprising to us,” Morey added. “This may be because Latinx people answering the survey in Trump-voting states were themselves political conservatives. Alternatively, we believe that the national survey we based our study on likely did not capture Latinx who were especially marginalized and fearful of an anti-immigration political and social environment, so our estimates of poor mental health were underestimated.”
Morey and her collaborators’ research was prompted by numerous reports from people experiencing distress and symptoms of anxiety immediately following Trump’s presidential win. The political rhetoric leading up to the election was focused on specific topics, including immigration, was rife with stigmatizing language, which often targeted immigrants from Mexico and Central America. Anecdotal reports following the election noted increased fear and anxiety among people identifying with the plight of immigrants.
The study will build upon prior literature on the effects of presidential elections on mental health and further illustrate the need for future work to examine major elections and political events as influential to health.
As the country is becoming more polarized by politics and in society, it will be important as public health practitioners to recognize the effects of these political events on population health. Co-author San Juanita García, assistant professor of Chicana/o studies at UC Santa Barbara said, “special attention should be paid to those who have been most historically oppressed in society, as they seem to have the most at stake when it comes to elections that can symbolize feelings of empowerment or disempowerment.”
Co-investigators also included Tanya Nieri, PhD from the UC Riverside Department of Sociology, Tim A. Bruckner, PhD from the UCI Program in Public Health; and Bruce G. Link, PhD from the UC Riverside School of Public Policy and Department of Sociology.
