How Politics Can Make You Sick
Stress levels are high and some people actually feel ill
Just as an official impeachment inquiry of President Trump begins, a new study finds 38% of Americans were already stressed out by politics, with 11.5% saying they’re so stressed it’s making them physically ill, even if only a little. The politically induced stress is rising, other research shows, and the effects are more prevalent among people who lean left than those on the other side of the aisle.
The study involved 800 respondents from a YouGov panel of 1.8 million U.S. residents representative of the population at large. A 32-question survey, conducted in March of 2017 and reported today in the journal PLOS One, asked about physical and mental health, and how people perceive politics as the source of any problems they reported. Among the findings:
- 31.8% agreed or strongly agreed that exposure to media promoting views contrary to their own beliefs “drove me crazy.”
- 29.3% said they lost their temper as a result of politics.
- 21.4% said politics fatigued them.
- 18.3% lost sleep due to politics.
- 4.1% said politics caused them to become suicidal.
