By Jennifer Porter Gore
Word In Black
Just weeks after daring to hope that Kamala Harris could defeat Donald Trump for the presidency, Black America is still mourning an emotionally devastating outcome.
“I never thought an election could make me this sad, but I’ve been literally feeling like I’m living soulless and out of body since the results…” a user with the X handle @JAPANESEBLACK wrote in a post on Nov. 8.
Fellow X user @joedeenikia was down in the dumps with him: “The amount of anxiety this election has caused me is actually insane …just for the end results to be this … yeah, I’m drained,” she wrote.
Since she replaced President Joe Biden in July, mental health experts say, the Black community has had to deal with unhealthy, complex levels of stress and anxiety.
Cautious but growing optimism among Black people over Harris’ unprecedented run competed against what was at stake for the nation in the 2024 election, concern that racism would hurt her at the ballot box, and worry about what a second Trump term would mean for them if she failed.
Now that Trump is headed back to the White House, the emotions are more complex. There is sadness over Harris’s crushing defeat, frustration and anger about racism in the race, and more anxiety over how Trump will wield nearly-unchecked power.
Stress test
“I’ve had a wide range of people who I’ve spoken to today and a lot of them can’t believe that Donald Trump actually won,” says Kiki Ramsey, a positive psychologist and executive coach in Atlanta.
“One of my clients specifically said she’ll go to her grave believing that Kamala didn’t win because of racism and misogyny,” she says. “These were her exact words.”
Ramsey and others say Black people should pay attention to their mental health, prioritize self-care and take positive steps to cope with the 2024 election results.
“Someone I know was saying they had a spot to get a massage,” says Dr. Damon Tweedy, a psychiatrist and professor at Duke University. “If that’s really going to help your well-being then do it. Don’t just neglect all those things because of what happened.”
The country was stressed about the election long before Election Day.
In October, an American Psychological Association survey found that 77 percent of respondents reported that their concerns over the nation’s future was “a significant source of stress in their lives,” and the most common. The 2024 election came in third, at around 70 percent.
Meanwhile, a 2018 APA report notes that higher stress among minority and low-income populations “can lead to health disparities and affect life expectancy.” That’s why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared racism “a serious public health threat.”
Polls show Harris’s groundbreaking campaign had energized Black voters. Hopes in the Black community grew along with the size of her rallies and polls showing she had pulled even with Trump just days before the vote.
Ramsey said even her 7-year-old daughter, who doesn’t normally pay attention to politics, paid attention to Harris: “She [was] definitely interested, as a black girl, seeing a black woman” run for president, That hope may have made Harris’s defeat that much harder to deal with.
Tweedy, associate professor of psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine, noted that his students and others he’d spoken with after the election were disappointed because they hoped Harris would win. That’s a significant shift from what he encountered as a Duke medical school student 25 years ago.
Back then, “I saw medical students, and these are my classmates, who would have been very much pleased with what happened on Tuesday,” says Tweedy.
‘You still have to balance’
Although Harris’s loss was a bitter pill to swallow, Ramsey noticed clients, colleagues and friends being more gracious to one another.
“You may not agree with me, but at the end of the day, I think that if we’re all human beings, we understand that there’s a time and place for everything, and everybody has to process this, this in their own way,” she says.
Ramsey and Tweedy are urging people to practice evidence-based approaches to keep the negative effects of stress at bay. These include avoiding hard-to-manage stressors, seeking support from friends or family members, ignoring temptations to binge on junk food, or becoming a couch potato. A nutritious diet can help one’s health and maintain the energy needed to exercise and manage stress.
Keeping up with the news is important, but so is the headspace and time to heal from disappointment. If you’re still feeling blue, angry or dismayed for two weeks or longer, both Ramsey and Tweedy say it’s time to seek professional help.
“You still have to balance,” Tweedy says. “Is doomscrolling on Twitter or Instagram really helping my mental well-being? Is there anything I’m doing that’s going to actually help me take action to actually make something better?”
If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, are thinking about suicide, or worried about someone else who needs emotional support, call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988. Help is available 24/7. TTY users can dial 711 then 988 to get help.