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 now allowed as responses to this comment. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will continue to be removed and our normal comment rules still apply to other comments.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

Major political and societal events can have dramatic impacts on psychological health and impact sleep and emotional well-being. While conventional wisdom suggests these highly anticipated events, such as elections, can cause stress and disrupt well-being, little research has been published exploring this relationship.

Now, researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and colleagues show how major sociopolitical events can have global impacts on sleep that are associated with significant fluctuations in the public’s collective mood, well-being, and alcohol consumption. The findings, published in the National Sleep Foundation’s journal Sleep Health show that divisive political events negatively influenced a wide variety of factors related to public mood.

“It is unlikely that these findings will come as shock to many given the political turbulence of the last several years,” said corresponding author Tony Cunningham, PhD, director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition at BIDMC. “Our results likely mirror many of our own experiences surrounding highly stressful events, and we felt this was an opportunity to scientifically validate these assumptions.”

As part of a larger study exploring the sleep and psychological repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic, the team surveyed 437 participants in the United States and 106 international participants daily between October 1–13, 2020 (before the election) and October 30–November 12, 2020 (days surrounding the November 3 U.S. election). Participants reported on their duration and quality of sleep, alcohol consumption and subjective experience of overall stress. Their responses revealed reduced sleep quantity and efficiency coupled with heightened stress, negative mood and alcohol use in the period surrounding the election. While these results were observed at a lower level in non-U.S. participants, worsening health habits were significantly correlated with mood and stress only among U.S. residents.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352721822001498?via%3Dihub

[removed]

[removed]

[removed]

[removed]

So true, when Biden took over it affected many peoples sleep negatively

I’m sure trapping people in their homes and forcing them to wear a diaper on their face and take an experimental gene therapy shot for an overly exaggerated cold had nothing to with it right?

[deleted]

[removed]