President Trump Stress Disorder: Partisanship, Ethnicity, and Expressive Reporting of Mental Distress After the 2016 Election

Masha Krupenkin, David Rothschild, Shawndra Hill and Elad Yom-Tov

SAGE Open, 2019, vol. 9, issue 1, 2158244019830865

Abstract: In the aftermath of the 2016 election, many Democrats reported significant increases in stress, depression, and anxiety. Were these increases real, or the product of expressive reporting? Using a unique data set of searches by more than 1 million Bing users before and after the election, we examine the changes in mental-health-related searches among Democrats and Republicans. We then compare these changes to shifts in searches among Spanish-speaking Latinos in the United States. We find that while Democrats may report greater increases in post-election mental distress, their mental health search behavior did not change after the election. On the other hand, Spanish-speaking Latinos had clear, significant, and sustained increases in searches for “depression,†“anxiety,†“therapy,†and antidepressant medications. This suggests that for many Democrats, expressing mental distress after the election was a form of partisan cheerleading.

Keywords: partisanship; partisan cheerleading; expressive reporting; race; ethnicity; mental health; search (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:sagope:v:9:y:2019:i:1:p:2158244019830865

DOI: 10.1177/2158244019830865

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