Federico Comments on How to Healthily Navigate Election Season

A recent CNN health article, titled, “Surviving 2020's election countdown with your sanity intact,” discusses strategies to maintain a healthy mental state, while many struggle with the current political climate in the United States.

One suggestion from Christopher Federico, PhD, professor in the Departments of Psychology and Political Science at the University of Minnesota, is to think carefully about anxiety and what information it may have us seek out as well as how this might make us trust leaders that manipulate these feelings of fear and anxiety. Another suggestion he offers is to avoid “doomscrolling.” Doomscrolling is the act of constantly consuming (potentially-negative) online news. Though the tendency to focus on negative or alarming stimuli may derive from human evolutionary history, it can add to anxiety in the context of social-media consumption.