Politics and elections getting you depressed? Researchers know why

A Hillary Clinton supporter watches in disbelief as results roll in during a US election night watch party on Nov 9, 2016, in Austin, Texas. — Photos: TNS

For some people, the election of Donald Trump was a glorious moment of triumph. For others, it was a debilitating moment of trauma. For a team of researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), it was the perfect opportunity to test how the brain responds to political distress.

“A lot of research on stress in the brain looks at events that occur on an individual level,” said Sarah Tashjian, a graduate student in psychology at UCLA who led the work. “We wanted to see if we could extrapolate that to a larger event like a shift in the political climate.”