Symbolic disempowerment and Donald Trump's 2016 presidential election: Mental health responses among Latinx and white populations

Increasing psychological distress among Californians from 2013 to 2020: Race/ethnic differences

“…We also found significantly higher levels of psychological distress scores among Latino/a Californians, beginning in 2017. This coincides with the election of President Trump, which previous research has illustrated had negative implications for the mental health of Latino/a Americans ( Morey et al., 2021 ), ( Krupenkin et al., 2019 ).…”

“…While we documented significant increases in psychological distress scores and severe psychological distress scores from 2013 to 2020, we were unable to determine the influence of specific stressors. For instance, the 2016 election was divisive and has been linked to more poor mental health days, especially in states, such as California, that voted for Hillary Clinton rather than Donald Trump ( Morey et al., 2021 ), ( Yan et al., 2021 ). Social media consumption also increased precipitously over that period and social media has also been linked to negative mental health outcomes ( Keles et al., 2020 ).…”

“…Overall, 2020 was marked by increases in stressors, depressive symptoms, psychological distress, and mental health problems ( McGinty et al., 2022 )– ( Ettman et al., 2022 ), which are critically important for shaping population health ( Becker and Kleinman, 2013 ), ( Moreno et al., 2020 ). However, the changes to mental health in 2020 also coincided with broader societal shifts in the past decade that have likely dramatically restructured the mental health of the American population; increasing dissemination of videos of police brutality ( Bor et al., 2018 ), amplified consumption of social media ( Keles et al., 2020 ), the legacy of the Great Recession/increased economic vulnerability ( Case and Deaton, 2015 ), a polarizing presidential administration ( Morey et al., 2021 ), and increasing frequency/severity of climate events ( Ebi et al., 2021 ), ( Cianconi et al., 2020 ).…”

Sanctuary city policies and Latinx immigrant mental health in California

“…Anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation, which show increases over our test period more broadly in the US, may also coincide with a cluster of sanctuary city policy enactments late in the study period (i.e., 2016 and thereafter) but not be caused by the policy per se . To minimize this temporal confounding, we employed time-series methods recommended in the literature ( Catalano et al, 2008 ) and used in mental health studies ( Harper & Bruckner, 2017 ; Morey et al, 2021 ). We modeled self-reported mental health in California (overall, at the state level) over 92 study months: June 2011 to January 2019.…”

An intersectional and social determinants of health framework for understanding Latinx psychological distress in 2020: Disentangling the effects of immigration policy and practices, the Trump Administration, and COVID-19-specific factors.

“…For example, the Latinx sample was diverse along multiple dimensions; however, small sample sizes of non-Mexicans led to using a binary indicator of Mexican or not as a covariate in the regressions. Although this analysis takes us farther in terms of aligning with the larger literature on intra-Latinx heterogeneity in psychological outcomes and overcoming some of the limitations of previous COVID-19 era literature on Latinx mental health (Estrada-Martínez et al, 2019;Salgado de Snyder et al, 2021), further disaggregation of Latinxs by country/region of origin and ancestry and how it intersects and interacts with other characteristics such as language (Morey et al, 2021) and skin color would be valuable. Indeed, even as this sample is population based, it may not perfectly align to the broader distribution of Latinx people in the United States.…”