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While politicians can make decisions that have direct effects on keeping the public healthy, new research from Emory University highlights how policymakers may also have indirect impacts on their constituents’ wellbeing.
A study published in Social Science and Medicine in January examined some of the potential mental health effects related to the current political climate. Previous research has suggested that politicians’ actions and media outlets’ coverage of the events can have a chronic stress effect on those who watch national political news.
From fall 2023 to spring 2024, the paper’s authors — comprised of researchers at Emory, University at Albany, and Northern Arizona University — surveyed 148 Georgia women between 18 and 40 years old. They asked the participants a series of questions to estimate how much political events caused them stress, in addition to measuring how much anxiety, depression, and overall stress they experience.
Ultimately, the authors found an association between increased stress from politics and symptoms of the three mental health measures. Stephanie Eick, an assistant professor at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health and the paper’s senior author, said the paper is consistent with other research that found these symptoms often persist beyond the results of a presidential election.
“Even when it’s not election season, I do think that it’s important to think about the political climate as a source of stress,” she said.
The study participants were just surveyed once, so the authors could not determine what caused the negative health impacts. Additionally, most of the participants have earned college degrees, identify as liberal, and live in the metro Atlanta region — making it difficult to know whether these trends hold true among all Georgia women.
One national issue Eick and her coauthors noted could be an especially stressful event for the mental health of women was the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to rescind national abortion protections. That ruling, paired with Georgia’s six-week abortion ban, is cited by the authors as a reason why the mental health of women in the state is important to be monitored.
“As somebody who’s a woman of reproductive age living here, it seems that a lot of the restrictions related to abortion access are salient here,” she said.
Asked to comment on the study, Frank Sloan, a health policy and management professor emeritus at the Duke Global Health Institute, said in an email that the relatively small number of women studied who identified as politically conservative or had not received a college degree make it difficult to determine how different groups’ mental health are affected by following politics.
Sloan added that it would have been helpful if the authors had examined whether the mental health outcomes changed before and after the 2024 presidential election.
Eick said these limitations are important to be addressed in future studies, and she would like to see her group or others pursue a study that tracks women’s health with political engagement over time. But she said the results seem consistent with other researchers' observations on the topic.
Because the measures of general stress, anxiety, and depression can be screened for by primary care doctors, Eick said this study could be a call for clinicians to be on the lookout for attending these symptoms among women of reproductive age.
And as federal lawmakers proceed with actions that may further distress some Georgia residents, such as a plan to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from government health care services, Eick said it’s important for people to be proactive about seeking mental health treatment when available.
“Even if we can’t mitigate some of the political stressors … maybe we could mitigate some of the mental health outcomes through existing resources.”
Allen Siegler is a reporter covering public health in Atlanta for Healthbeat. Contact Allen at asiegler@healthbeat.org.
