rumination

David Dunning, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, suggests anyone who’s struggling with negative mental health impacts related to the election — such as anxiety, irritability or excessive rumination — take a break from election-related media and activities.

Published as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research in April, the model indexes for three characteristics of mental illnesses – rumination, negative thinking and reinforced behaviors – and attempts to measure how those characteristics affect a person’s consumption, job choice, savings and portfolio choices.

Black women who were more frequently exposed to racism showed stronger connections in brain networks involved with rumination and vigilance.

Rumination – reliving and analyzing an event on a loop – and vigilance, meaning being watchful for future threats, are possible coping responses to these stressors.

Although we saw links between racism, brain connectivity changes and accelerated aging, we did not measure coping responses like rumination and vigilance in real time, meaning as people were experiencing them.