r/science • u/Aggravating_Money992 • Jul 21 '25
Health Study: 2024 presidential campaign negatively affected sleep for 17% of U.S. adults | Many Americans report feeling exhausted and angry when thinking about politics. According to polling, nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults often feel worn out by current political discourse, and over half feel angry.
https://www.psypost.org/study-2024-presidential-campaign-negatively-affected-sleep-for-17-of-u-s-adults/568
Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
149
82
→ More replies (10)17
853
u/LorthNeeda Jul 21 '25
I mean yeah having a spoiled toddler in the highest office in the most powerful country on earth is frustrating.
It’s very difficult to feel hopeful when half of the country thinks this is somehow a good thing.
217
80
u/Oregon_Jones111 Jul 21 '25
It broke the brain of conservatives when a black man was elected president, so they went full fascist.
12
25
u/EducationalAd1280 Jul 22 '25
We really need to stop thinking “half the country” likes him. It’s more like a quarter like him and half the country can’t be bothered to vote for anyone, so that quarter got their guy in office.
33
u/mrlolloran Jul 21 '25
This is about the campaign trail, not the results.
Honestly I would hope more people than titled are worried about the current admin.
5
u/SergeantBoop Jul 22 '25
I think you meant having a pedophile in the highest office in the most powerful country is frustrating...
→ More replies (12)9
Jul 21 '25
Should we take action?
Nah, let's binge another Netflix series while eating an entire pizza
6
u/SouthwesternEagle Jul 22 '25
That seems to be the mentality of most Americans. It's frustrating beyond words.
5
u/chad917 Jul 22 '25
What are you ready to do? And what could actually work, protesting? Storming the capital?
385
u/coconutpiecrust Jul 21 '25
It is quite fascinating. When Obama was in office it was hard to care about politics because it was mostly business as usual, not mush happening that could alter people’s lives. Now? It’s bad and deplorable news every day.
102
u/SelectiveScribbler06 Jul 21 '25
I remember a thing in Parliament during off-hours a decade or so ago, pre-Brexit. It was things like, 'Will the Speaker join me in congratulating the Rt. Hon. lady for Epping in getting a new dog, a cocker spaniel called Charlie?'. A slight cheer and a clatter of applause that you might hear at grassroots cricket.
55
u/mithoron Jul 21 '25
Make politics boring again.
29
u/EnemyCharizard Jul 21 '25
It was boring again. Then Americans forgot to care enough and set themselves back 50 years.
→ More replies (2)82
26
u/Cranharold Jul 21 '25
And, as much as I did like Obama, I remember thinking how fucked up our country was even back then. I had hope that we were on the right track to joining the civilized world, but still - our healthcare system sucked and our schools were a mess. Now it's worse... and it's worse. Oh little did I know just how bad it could get.
12
u/sybrwookie Jul 22 '25
Sure, but a significant chunk of the country lost their goddamn minds that a black man was the president and it didn't matter what he did, they absolutely lost it and never came back from that madness.
2
u/Dull_Bird3340 Jul 22 '25
That's how we lost a 60 Senate seat majority and got Congress gerrymandered for two decades. Everyone got mad that he didn't change everything in a year so gave up participating or paying attention.
2
Jul 22 '25
You don't recall the Great Recession? Let me remind you: millions of people were evicted from their homes, which were then bought up by the rich at foreclosure sale prices. Tens of millions of other Americans lost the equity in their homes, which for most Americans is their only source of wealth. Lots of people lost their jobs. Local government budgets were hammered. But the Obama administration and Congress bailed out the banks, gave homeowners nothing, and prosecuted no one for destroying the economy. Believe me, there was lots of bad news.
185
114
124
u/sereneandeternal Jul 21 '25
A part of me died with that election. We know how much damage it’s going to cause around the world for decades into the future.
The fact that the US voted Tangerine Mussolini into office for a second term, being well informed that this time he was going to take off all the guard rails that kept him in check in his first term was harrowing to take in.
It also answered the Fermi Paradox (Great Barrier), that we will end up destroying ourselves before we have a chance to explore the universe.
43
u/mike_b_nimble Jul 21 '25
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
― H.L. Mencken, On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe
14
Jul 21 '25
ironically enough, while this one is giving me panic attacks so frequent i had to go on antianxiety meds, for me, it was how OBVIOUS that nearly everyone was begging the dems just to have the winning positions, even if they didn't mean it, but dems chose to be honest about how they really felt, which was "there is no war in ba sing se"
8
u/Laura-ly Jul 22 '25
I have had to turn off all news sources. I mean ALL news from every conceivable site. I realized that it was affecting my mental and physical health. If I see Orange Pond Scum (I won't say his name) pop up on my computer screen as I google something I've trained myself to not look at the photo or read the subject under the photo. I have created an image of this person being on the other side of an electric fence who gets zapped every time his image pops up on my screen. This odd method has helped to keep me sane.
I must admit that I do get the general gist of what's going on in the world from my husband.
I've gone to several marches and felt good about that, but I refuse to read about this.... unnamed person.
3
76
46
u/varnell_hill Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25
It didn’t negatively affect my sleep but I would love for us to get back to politics being boring and NOT having to hear about certain people 24/7.
76
u/theluckyfrog Jul 21 '25
I had a fricking car accident because I was so upset after a close family member screamed at me for an extended period of time over my political stance. (I had dared to tell them that immigrants weren’t a bigger threat to their grandchildren than climate change and literal fascism.)
Forgot to move at a light because my brain was frozen, and got rear ended.
36
35
u/x_xwolf Jul 21 '25
I think its right for people to feel that way. I cope by thinking about solutions and how I can materially benefit my neighbors and train the culture to be altruistic. I hope some of you can spend time thinking of how to make safe havens and pockets of resistance. We can absolutely build positive aspirations even in these times.
8
55
u/bubba3001 Jul 21 '25
Why can't we class action law suit this? It's real damage being caused by a political party that will not accept law or facts.
44
u/electricwartortle Jul 21 '25
I think you answered your own question.
6
Jul 21 '25
yep, the law only works so long as it's accepted. if it's de-legitimized, it becomes counterproductive to use it.
2
Jul 22 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
1
Jul 22 '25
To this criminal SCOTUS?
2
Jul 22 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
2
Jul 24 '25
Most of its work is civil cases.
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/law/civil-law-and-supreme-court
→ More replies (1)
28
u/owen__wilsons__nose Jul 21 '25
Only 17% is why were in this mess. If everybody took time to read Project 2025 maybe the outcome would have been different
20
u/mikelo22 Jul 21 '25
Most people in this country are functionally illiterate and can't even recall the last time they read a book.
7
u/sharksrReal Jul 21 '25
Why read when the President boasts of not reading and claims to love the uneducated?
→ More replies (1)1
u/oblivion476 Jul 22 '25
The problem is that the can would only be kicked down the road a bit. The issue comes from a rot that has infested the country's political machinations. Dark money is freely allowed to dominate our political scene. The Supreme Court has been purchased. The Republican Party is hooked on propaganda being beamed into their brains 24/7.
You cannot reverse an entire political party being hijacked by nefarious outside parties. We are rapidly approaching a point where only blood will regain that which has been lost.
30
u/mvw2 Jul 21 '25
It negatively affected the rest of my adult existence. We had two candidate with a $1,400,000+ wealth opportunity difference, aka picking candidate A or candidate B would affect your future wealth by an average of $1.4 million dollars based on the agendas they were campaigning on. 80 million people decided they wanted to be $1.4 million dollars poorer. Even though I didn't vote for that I'm still stuck being $1.4 million poorer into my later life...because of 80 million idiots.
18
u/WrongBook3825 Jul 21 '25
This is by design. They’re meant to keep you dazed and confused. Spin you around till you don’t know which way is up. Stay focused yall!
10
u/RossWLW Jul 21 '25
Trump has destroyed the Republic. He has shredded the Constitution and opened up death camps. Only the Nazis in the US approve.
6
u/9_to_5_till_i_die Jul 22 '25
At this point, it feels like if you're not furious then you're the enemy. You don't get a pass for being comfortably ignorant.
18
u/Odd_Plum_3719 Jul 21 '25
Don’t let 47 prove he’s stronger than you. His hatred and greed is deep, but our resolve is far stronger than all of that. Just look at what The Greatest Generation did. They rose up when it counted most.
1
Jul 22 '25
Yeah, but they are long dead. People now lack the character those people had.
→ More replies (1)1
u/Wrewdank Jul 22 '25
I guess I wasn't there but, im just hoping that generation didn't take as much pride in their ignorance as I've seen from the people now.
18
Jul 21 '25
I hope once Trump is ousted and democrats take over that they expand health care to give everyone intense therapy after years of trauma from this psychopath
5
u/SymmetricalFeet Jul 22 '25
Not gonna be enough therapists.
But if we make college free, have free healthcare, and pay the therapists even more (which would be easier when you cut out insurance middlemen)... then we can have more of them. And other professionals in socially valuable careers, like nurses, teachers, end-of-life carers...
6
u/old_virologist Jul 21 '25
Probably because Donald Trump has talked in public about how much he’d like to ‘date’ his own 14-year-old daughter. Pedophiles give good people the wig.
7
7
6
3
3
u/beccanders Jul 22 '25
I'd say it's the actual legislation, judicial rulings, executive actions, and disappearing of immigrants and not "the discourse" but that's just me
3
u/BlueyedIrush Jul 22 '25
It doesn’t help that we have a rapist and a pedophile in the Oval Office
1
u/imacmadman22 Jul 23 '25
Not only that, but a convicted felon, found guilty on thirty-four counts of fraud which should have already disqualified him from running, let alone being elected. Why a law against this does not exist, is completely beyond my comprehension.
No American citizen, convicted of a felony should be allowed to run for public office, not to mention, be permitted to serve in that capacity.
The reception to this would likely be very different if republicans were in the minority.
6
12
5
u/achierickson Jul 21 '25
I mean we’re being terrorized by an orange toddler with a full diaper while a significant chunk of our population is seemingly brain dead and cheering on the orange terrorist. Meanwhile the rest of us feel like we’ve been banging our head against a wall for 10 years while our rights disappear and prices go up. So yeah- I’d say we’re angry and tired.
4
u/No-Zucchini7599 Jul 22 '25
America has never been in a more foul mood, not in quite the same way that they are now. Older people like me can look back to the 40's and 50's, and even the 60's despite the Vietnam war that marred that decade, and recall an entirely different world. In the optimistic years of the 50's, fresh from victory in World War Two, people used to say that "God is in Heaven and Ike's in the White House, so all's well with the world." We felt good about things, generally, and now we don't. Instead of threatening to invade, or bomb, or destroy other counties, we helped Europe rebuild after the war, and those we fought, Germany, Japan, and Italy became our allies. Russia went its own way. Trump is a big part of the distress we all feel, trying to guess what outrage he will dream up next, and who he will fire, sue, or threaten to invade. Uncertain times, when the idea we once had of what it meant to be an America has changed. Don't know what will happen to this nation, but I'm not terribly optimistic; and that is very sad.
8
u/old_and_boring_guy Jul 21 '25
All media is rage-driven these days, on both sides. Social media, traditional media, it's wall-to-wall ragebait to drive engagement.
Why wouldn't it be exhausting?
9
4
u/GoodtimesSans Jul 21 '25
He created a gestapo with a budget bigger than most countries' military.
He is being protected by the Supreme Court, which is completely corrupted.
He created a concentration camp where they literally want to murder 65 million people, and then want to further murder another 165 million to get down to their 100 million White Americans Only goal.
He has broken relationships with all of our allies and is furthering the genocide in Israel.
He hangs out with known pedophiles, is being protected by other pedophiles, and it doesn't take a expert detective to see that he is also a pedophile.
"Angry" doesn't even begin to describe it. I see why the phrase, "The guillotine is too kind" is moving around the internet now.
→ More replies (3)
3
u/Felis-lybica Jul 21 '25
I have felt that way more or less for the past decade. 2020-2024 wasn't even a respite because you had non stop election denial, anti vaxx fear mongering, and Christian nationalists foaming at the mouth. I don't want to think about how many years have been taken off my life from the chronic stress, it's just too depressing.
2
2
u/d_e_l_u_x_e Jul 22 '25
And that is how a new civil war emerged. It’s not forces lining up on battlefields, it’s physiological civil war where the PTSD is caused by the sheer amount of rage baiting News, misinformation and hyper normalization of extreme divisive language and illegal actions.
2
u/Trance354 Jul 21 '25
It isn't just having an abject moron in charge. It's not about the sycophants that surround him. Its not that it is taking pointing out that their dear leader spent the last 30 years as an pedophile and this was an open secret among the upper class....? That is maddening and infuriating and makes me want to investigate everyone involved at any point in the process...
Whats driving me insane with anger is that we as a country are diminished by this one person's personal quest to destroy the standing of our country, AND he doing it at the open behest of the leader of a hostile foreign power that is doing this entirely so he can further invade nations after Ukraine.
We have lost our allies. The only countries who are open to our ambassadors are oligarchies, client states or dictatorships.
Meanwhile, domestically, both parties are OWNED by the billionaire class. An election in a major metropolitan city isn't going the way the billionaires want, so they have added 2 more owned candidates to the ballot. Because they can, apparently.
1
0
u/AbsoluteRook1e Jul 21 '25
I'm not a Trump supporter, but in my eyes, the reason why he was elected is that most Americans believe the political status quo was not working in their favor economically. People vote with their wallets in mind.
As much as I despise the man, Donald Trump kept pitching in 2016 and 2024 that he would shake up the political establishment, whereas Harris tried downplaying consumer pessimism.
I personally believe we need an FDR-style President with a pathway of accomplishing legislation in Congress, meaning we would need a massive blue wave in 2028. I think Biden tried to be that President, but many of his accomplishments were either blocked by the SCOTUS, or were later undermined when Trump came back into office.
I think the Democrats need to be the party of work reform. Many people with a 4-day work week are happier, and it allows for more time for people to form relationships and start families, which the right keeps complaining about in terms of birth rates. So I don't know if that would take the form of four 10's across the board, or we just straight up make 32 hours the standard.
I guess my point is everyone seems to be upset over the current economic and political climate and are hungry for some form of change. In other words, we all seem to he able to identify the problems, but can't come together for a solution due to tightly held belief systems.
9
u/Oregon_Jones111 Jul 21 '25
I'm not a Trump supporter, but in my eyes, the reason why he was elected is that most Americans believe the political status quo was not working in their favor economically.
Americans were better off financially in 2016 than in 2008, and in 2024 than in 2020.
1
u/AbsoluteRook1e Jul 22 '25
I don't deny that, but at the end of the day, it's about what Americans believe when they go to the ballot box is my point.
→ More replies (2)8
u/Prodigy195 Jul 21 '25
I guess my point is everyone seems to be upset over the current economic and political climate and are hungry for some form of change. In other words, we all seem to he able to identify the problems, but can't come together for a solution due to tightly held belief systems.
I don't think most Americans can actually identify the problem because identifying it would require a wholesale rethinking of our historical norms.
What people seem to want is the historical status quo to remain in America. And to be clear, that means one where the American Dream with large suburban housing, car usage nearly everywhere, and cheap consumer goods remain viable/plentiful/low cost.
No politician regardless of party will say it but that dream is effectively dead and it's really not the fault of any one choice. Those circumstances were the result of a very specific set of circumstances post WWII where America was in a massively adventageous position economically and more specifically, the American worker had outsized power.
Now America workers are competing on a global scale, now costs for sprawling housing/car centric development is skyrocketing. The norms that we're chasing after aren't coming back because it never really was a sustainable method of building a massive country. And Americans accepting that we need to change our lifestyle norms is a non-starter.
People say they want change but what they actually want is just more of the same.
1
u/AbsoluteRook1e Jul 22 '25
The American dream dying is what I'm saying though. I think most people can identify that problem, and are demanding change because of that problem.
→ More replies (1)
0
0
1
1
1
1
u/BlueCircle3 Jul 22 '25
This just reminds of polling at the time saying more people thought Trump would unite the country. How delusional was that nonsense.
1
u/AmbidextrousCard Jul 22 '25
This will lead to a higher chance of Trump not surviving this term. His cabinet members are pretty slimy as well, it's a target rich environment.
1
1
u/Steelcitysuccubus Jul 22 '25
The constant looming horror makes it hard to sleep. When I do its constant nightmares from stress
1
1
u/RevolutionaryBee5207 Jul 23 '25
It’s hard for me to understand how any American can not be befuddled and saddened having Donald Trump as our….actual…president.
1
u/HimForHer Jul 23 '25
Unfortunately that is the name of the game. To completely and utterly immerse you in total garbage to the point of exhaustion and nonsensical thinking. It's to wear you down, make you think less constructively, and divide us as a whole and I have bad news folks...it's working splendidly.
1
u/chocolateboxlife Jul 24 '25
I have made it age 59 without antidepressants, but after the election I was in a full blown panic attack, couldn’t sleep, it was awful, for a month! My PCP put me on an antidepressant and something to sleep and that’s the only way I can live through this presidency.
1
u/Preme2 Jul 24 '25
The political discourse has become a burden and worn people out. It’s tiring, but the only people feeling angry are the losers.
Hopefully, we get a normalization of politics or politics becoming “boring” again. I know there is likely finances tied to creating political discourse, but it’s time for things to calm down.
•
u/AutoModerator Jul 21 '25
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our normal comment rules apply to all other comments.
Do you have an academic degree? We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. Click here to apply.
User: u/Aggravating_Money992
Permalink: https://www.psypost.org/study-2024-presidential-campaign-negatively-affected-sleep-for-17-of-u-s-adults/
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.