After Donald Trump won the presidency in November, liberal college students were pretty upset as they took part in cry-ins, walkouts, and marches. However, a psychiatry professor at Michigan State University believes that a lot of millennials upset with the election results are now developing mental health problems.
Dr. Farha Abbasi, who’s an expert on mental health post-election, told the Spartan Newsroom that for some millennials are becoming more anxious as they struggle with their identities while depression is worsening for others.
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“Millennials are already facing a lot of challenges,” Abbasi said, explaining that between living during wars in the Middle East, a major recession, rising tuition costs, few employment opportunities, and crippling debt can really take their toll on mental health.
Most of these mental health problems are seen in women, LGBTQs, minorities, and non-white immigrants. They can experience anything from fear, shame, or helplessness.
William Doherty, a psychologist at the University of Minnesota, published a manifesto condemning Trump which was co-signed by around 3,000 citizen therapists.
In that manifesto, Doherty listed the main effects of “Trumpism”:
- Fear and alienation among scapegoated groups, beginning with Latino immigrants and Muslims, and then other groups who become identified as threats
- Exaggerated masculinity as a cultural ideal, with particular influence on young people and economically insecure men
- Coarsening of public life by personal attacks on those who disagree
- Erosion of the American democratic tradition which has emphasized the agency of we-the-people instead of the Strong Man tradition of power
Susan Sarandon went on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert to say that despite Trump being a horrible president, there’s a major silver lining in the sense that millennials are more woke than ever and getting politically engaged. And this week the Harvard Kennedy School launched it’s very own Resistance School to try to defy Trump over the course of his presidency.
So, with enough resistance and protesting the president, the better liberals will feel about themselves.
