Students and community members feeling blue about the results of the Nov. 2 election are not alone — many experts agree that elections can cause emotional distress, especially when a favored candidate or issue is defeated.
Sometimes known as “post-election depression,” this short-term phenomenon usually lasts a few weeks, Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard psychologist who has studied voters’ emotional responses to results, told MSNBC.com. But for people in Lane County, 58 percent of whom voted for defeated presidential candidate John Kerry, feelings of disappointment may linger.
Counseling and Testing Center Director Robin Holmes said the center, which offers counseling services to students, has not seen an increase in students asking to meet with counselors since the election. But Holmes said many existing student patients were affected by the passage of Measure 36, which limits marriage to one man and one woman.
Holmes said it is common for counseling patients to discuss disappointment due to an election as part of their therapy.
“I think it would actually be something that is very common because it is an intimate relationship and talking about something that affects people during everyday life — it makes sense they would bring it up,” she said.
Holmes said students who feel frustrated with the outcome of the election could see a counselor, but can probably effectively work through their feelings by sharing them with others.
“I do think that it would make sense to come in and see someone at the Counseling Center,” she said. “But more importantly, people need to take care of themselves by talking to others. All those common sense things would be really important.
“Keeping it in or taking it out on yourself, all those things are not going to be as helpful.”
Local licensed clinical social worker Gary Reiss, Ph.D, said no new patients solicited his services because of the election, but a “broad spectrum” of his ongoing clients have discussed the issue. He said many people experience anxiety before elections and depression after if their candidate loses.
“I think people get their hopes up and minds set on
political change in a political area they are concerned about,” he said.
Reiss said people’s responses vary widely, but many people have a “fight or flight” response to losing an election — they either “fight” by becoming “super activist” or trying to move somewhere else, or exhibit a “flight” response by trying not to think about what they are upset about.
“I’ve probably seen more people who are depressed than hopeless at this point,” Reiss said, noting that some of his patients were motivated by the results of the election or even happy with the results.
Although the disciplines of psychology and politics have traditionally been separated, they are actually intertwined, Reiss said.
“How people feel about their world has a huge effect on their psychology,” he said, adding that feeling hopeless about political change can amplify peoples’ other negative feelings.
He added that campaigns often use psychological means, such as scare tactics, to influence voters.
“People are often manipulated by political parties … and psychology can help bring that into perspective,” he said.
Reiss said modern therapy isn’t designed to get rid of the feelings that spur people to be politically active, but “helps people to channel their feelings into social change.”
“It’s a really new perspective and it’s growing,” he said.
Reiss said it is vital for people to talk about their feelings and realize they can change how they relate to a certain issue, even if they can’t change it on a global scale.
“What’s more hopeful is if you can get them to understand that maybe they can’t cause global changes right away, but they can do their own work,” he said. “That’s one of the things that helps to get people working locally.”
He said some people invested so much effort in campaigns that they feel they should give up, but that their efforts are still necessary for grassroots work. Reiss said he promotes the same concept of local involvement to Israelis and Palestinians he works with on trips to the Middle East. He added that the old concept that people change their leaders has become outmoded compared to building grassroots political change.
“Looking at the change and improvement people can make in their own community helps a lot to empower people,” he said.
Reiss also said people shouldn’t try to deny feeling anxious or depressed.
“It can get to the point where you really need to talk with a therapist about it,” he said.
People’s distress over the election caused Eugene counselor Richard Grimaldi to form a support group of nine people to help them “express and crystallize their feelings and thoughts.”
Grimaldi, who held similar sessions during both wars in Iraq and said he placed an advertisement for the session in the Nov. 11 issue of the Eugene Weekly, said “it’s obvious there’s this mood about (the election).
“Certainly the election has been a catalyst and a source of distress, but I think it feeds into a larger concern about the direction of the country and the world,” he said.
Grimaldi said part of his approach for the group is seeking to identify and create a dialogue between the internal roles participants play, such as a victim or a winner. He said the process gives people hope because they can realize they have more options about how to feel and can have greater empathy for people with different views.
Grimaldi said people should talk with each other, look to their spiritual beliefs or practices and try to express themselves through song, poetry or journaling to cope with election-related distress.

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