

For around a hundred and fifty years or so, most of the West has been run on largely democratic principles. But those days could well be coming to an end, as it now appears that the younger generation is no longer able to emotionally deal with the petty disagreements that democracy typically involves. At least according to a study carried out by Melissa Hagan, an assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University.





Hagan and her team of researchers surveyed 769 psychology students at Arizona State University in January and February 2017, to gauge their reaction to an Donald Trump being elected President. In the study, published Monday, the team found that 25 percent of students had "clinically significant event-related distress,” a form of PTSD commonly associated with war veterans, and defined by the Mayo Clinic as "a mental health condition that’s triggered by a terrifying event — either experiencing it or witnessing it."





This might have been partly understandable if someone really evil, like Joseph Stalin or Pol Pot had been elected, but in this case the extreme psychological condition was triggered by the election of a mild civic nationalist with a few common sense ideas about mass illegal immigration and trade.





Washington Post: As reported by the





The analysis reveals that women, racial minorities, people from working and lower-middle social classes, Democrats, non-Christians and sexual minorities reported significantly more election-related distress. Accounting for connections among various factors, the most useful predictors of stress were sex, political party, religion and perceived impact of the election on close relationships — more so than race and social class. Controlling for party affiliation, other demographic factors still influenced stress symptoms. In other words, Hagan said, it wasn’t just a case of sore losers....



Most notable, Hagan said, was “the extent of the clinical impairment” — the proportion of students whose symptoms rose to the level that could entail risk of subsequent PTSD.





So, according to this research, a full quarter of the respondents were pushed to the brink of mental collapse by a mere election result that was unlikely to effect them directly and whose impact on them was yet unknown at the time. The trauma was essentially caused by seeing someone with political opinions different from those of the media being elected President.





The data does not spell out the long-term consequences for mental or physical health of election-induced distress. Nor does it establish the cause of the trauma-like symptoms. But the researchers speculated that "issues of identity and social inequality prominent in election-related rhetoric” played a role...



One of the conclusions that Hagan drew from the results was that young people, contrary to prevailing narratives, “are paying attention.”



“Often there is a criticism of individuals in their early 20s, that they are these special snowflakes waiting for things to happen to them,” she said. “Young people are not just waiting. They’re absorbing and observing, and hopefully that will not result in clinical impairment but rather inspire them to seek out and find ways to take care of themselves.”



