Post-Election Health Effects � Not Just Psychological?
Buried in the lower right corner of last week�s
New England Journal of Medicine
� not up on the left, which spawns the headlines � appears �Health Effects of Dramatic Societal Events � Ramifications of the Recent Presidential Election.� David R. Williams, PhD, MPH, and Morgan M. Medlock, MD, M.Div, both from Harvard, describe �post-election health effects� and list ways clinicians can help their patients cope.
�Health effects,� rather than �syndrome� or �disorder,� suggests that the angst many of us have been feeling since November 9 isn�t a medical condition, but is a strange new normal. Others use stronger terms. Sarah Jones in Politicususa attributes the rape nightmares plaguing many women to Trump Traumatic Stress Disorder (TTSD). John Markowitz�s recent editorial �Anxiety in the Age of Trump� in Comprehensive Psychiatry attributes the �floods of patients� and �national � if not global � rising anxiety� to �Post-Trump Stress Disorder.� I prefer Jones� TTSD, because the distress began well before the shock of the election.
�Health effects,� rather than �syndrome� or �disorder,� suggests that the angst many of us have been feeling since November 9 isn�t a medical condition, but is a strange new normal. Others use stronger terms. Sarah Jones in Politicususa attributes the rape nightmares plaguing many women to Trump Traumatic Stress Disorder (TTSD). John Markowitz�s recent editorial �Anxiety in the Age of Trump� in Comprehensive Psychiatry attributes the �floods of patients� and �national � if not global � rising anxiety� to �Post-Trump Stress Disorder.� I prefer Jones� TTSD, because the distress began well before the shock of the election.
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