currently former president trump has a slight lead over his democratic rival, kamala harris and the average of georgia polls. later tonight, the former president will be holding his final campaign event in grand rapids, michigan, which will air on c-span2. this election night, c-span delivers something different. not just a presidential race but the state races that will decide the balance of power in congress. no political pundits. no spin. no commercial. just the candidates, the results, and you. follow c-span this election night beginning at 7:00 p.m. eastern, tuesday on tv, online, or on the free c-span now video app. once this election night, track up-to-the-minute detailed results for the national

campaign on c-span.org/results. stay informed on election night, online, at c-span.org/results. >> joining us now to discuss managing election stress and anxiety is dr. arthur evans, ceo of the american psychological association. thank you so much for being with us. >> i am glad to be here. >> your organization just released its newest survey which is out now. tell us about how that survey was conducted. >> conducted back in august, first part of august, first couple of weeks of august. over 3000 people. one of the things we do so that we can talk about subgroups is we oversample certain populations so we have enough in

the sample that we can reliably say that this is what we believe this group is saying and thinking. >> and one of the things the survey looks at is the relation to election stress that is causing americans. here are some of the findings 41% reported the state of the nation has made them consider moving to a different country. 39% say the political environment in their state made them consider moving to a different state. 64% feel their rights are under attack. 82% worry people may be pricing their values and opinions on false and inaccurate information. 32% say the political climate has caused strain between them and family members. talk to us about this report and your take away from those findings? guest: that is a very good summary of what we found. election stress is bipartisan.

one of the things that was very striking in this survey is that most of the questions you talked about there, they are not allowed -- there are not many differences between democrats and republicans and independents for that matter. this is a phenomenon affecting all of us in the population. the other thing that was really striking is that people are thinking about the consequences of the election on pretty dire terms. 72% saying they think that this election will end in violence and again, democrats, republicans, and independents think that. over half of people thinking that this election could be the end of democracy. again, republicans, democrats, and independents are saying that so there's a lot of consistency in how people are viewing these issues even if we have pretty elevated levels of stress around the election itself. >> dr. evans, research shows

that the distress we are feeling about the state of politics can harm both our physical and mental health. how can that present? what can it look like? >> it can affect our physical and mental health and it can affect our cardiovascular health and affect chronic diseases like diabetes. we know it can affect our mental health with anxiety and depression. we really have to be concerned about election stress because it is stress and we know stress can have a very negative impact on our overall health, both physical and mental. host: you mentioned this stress is evenly spread out among individuals regardless of the political party that they consider themselves under, but what about other groups? younger generations, older generations, men versus women?

what does the survey tell you about those groups? guest: sure. what the survey says -- one of the interesting findings is that historically what you find is that older adults have the least amount of stress. the older we get, the less stress we tend to experience. they show that pretty consistently over time. one of the things that was interesting about this survey is that on the question about concerns about the election and the environment, actually, older adults, 65 plus, have the highest proportion of people saying that they were concerned about that and the younger generation actually said that they had less. so one of the things that says is that on that particular question, older adults actually think that that is more likely and that they are experiencing more stress about it so it makes you wonder for people who have

gone through 9/11 and all these other events, what are they seeing about the current election that would lead them to that conclusion? we also saw demographic differences around race and gender, around race. for example, we found that african-americans and latinos are more likely to believe that their vote is going to matter, that their vote counts. there were not large differences but there were significant differences on questions like that so even though we have the big numbers, even though there is pretty much agreement along political lines around what is important, what is causing people stress, there are these demographic differences in the population. host: we are talking about managing election stress and anxiety with our guest, dr. arthur evans, ceo of the american psychological association. if you have a question or comment for him, he can start

calling now. if you are in the eastern or central time zone, the lion, -- line (202) 748-8000. (202) 748-8001 (202) 748-8001. we are just a couple of days from the election. how long does the stress usually last? when does it start to get better? >> one of the things that is really interesting in the data in the survey is that we see this peak in stress levels around the election cycle but a lot of the phenomena around stress around the political environment is actually carrying into our daily lives. you mentioned the data that says that 40% of americans have contemplated moving out of the country or out of their states because of the political environment. we also know that about one

third of people are saying that they are reducing their interactions with their family members or having stress in the interactions with their family members. so we are seeing people report that the relationship that they have both with friends, about half of people saying that they are spending less time with their friends because of political differences and people even saying who they would date is affected by their political viewpoints. so what we are seeing is it is not just the election but it's how the political environment largely is affecting our lives even after the election cycle. plants our first caller up for you is ronald in myrtle beach, south carolina. good morning, ronald. caller: good morning. i would like to get some advice. you know, it started in 2020

election when donald trump was elected before he was elected actually and the neighbor down the street took down his american flag and put up a trump flag. i took a picture of it and i wanted to posted on -- unpatriotic as it is to take the american flag down. in turn, it was like an army, neighbors coming down to my street, attacking my wife, wanting to know what you take the post down and all of that? it started there. in turn, we go up this year. every time trump was indicted, the neighbors were running around with their trump flag, intimidating people, saying how strong they are. here's people do not do that as for as i know. we do not try to intimidate people and it is a stress factor brought upon our neighbor.

not necessarily the campaigners bet our neighbors are so gullible. do you got any advice for us? it's not the tv. >> you, unfortunately, what we are seeing is that more and more people are engaging in that kind of activity and the survey talked about a large majority of people really being concerned about what we are seeing. i think some of this belongs to our political leaders. they have to turn down some of the rhetoric around the elections but the other part of it is you really have to think about the bigger picture here and the bigger picture is at the end of the day, we all have to live together and we all still want the same things for our families. the survey show there's a lot of agreeing upon with the issues are and what we disagree on is how we get there. so i hope we can step back back and take a look at the big

picture appeared what is really important? really try to be much more civil. one of the silver linings in the survey was that even though 80% of people believe that their political viewpoints are important and that that affects their relationships, about an equal number of people believe we should still have the conversation so even though people who disagree with them, i should say. even though there is what we see as vitriol and anxiety and those kind of things about the election, people still believe that they should be able to talk to people who disagree with them politically so that gives us hope that if people understand some strategies to do that, that we should start to make it the same. >> dr. evans, to that point,

right now, because there may be so much stress going around and people are not wanting to have these conversations now, what advice do you have on how to repair a relationship that may have been impacted by the election once we get past it? because i think the point you made about getting past the election is very important. trying to have those conversations is probably not going to be very fruitful and one of the things i would say, to really think about what matters and where you agree as opposed to where you don't agree. what i found over my career, particularly in political environments -- 20 years, i spent in those environments and most of the time, we come into those kinds of situations thinking about where our differences are and starting the conversation there. and we step back and think about where our we similar and how can

we start the conversation of the things that we agree on? you actually get a lot further. most people agree on maybe 80% of the things. people may not agree on how to approach those things but there are a lot of things people agree on and the other thing is to approach those conversations, not trying to convince the other person but trying to listen and try to understand. if you think about it, most people have pretty set political views. they are probably not going to change their viewpoints around for who they are supporting politically but they can step back and try to understand why people who think differently from them have those positions so i think it really is about trying to understand, trying to listen, and trying to find common ground where there is

agreement. >> in detroit, michigan. good morning. >> good morning. dr. evans, i have something for you. glad you are here to discuss this. there has been an abundance of mailers called voter participation and it says in commercials, too, that your vote is private but whether you vote or not is public. to me, that is stressful. it is almost like we are going to profile you and you are going to have a lower or higher social score and this time around is really crazy. have you heard of that? the campaign, voter participation? and don't you think it's not cool? >> yes, well, you know, it's really helping to educate people about the political system and

our political system, we do track whether you vote. we don't know how you voted so it is really more of an educational campaign to let you know what the reality is around how our political process works. >> for somebody like roland who is feeling some election related, political related stress, they are not necessarily tuning in and watching actively. they are going about their day-to-day life. they opened the mailbox and there is something in there that may be triggers stress. how can people best deal with that political related stress and anxiety? what are some coping strategies? once you know, there are a lot of things we can do to manage stress. the first thing is to recognize we are experiencing stress. one of the reasons we do the survey is to highlight for people what people are experiencing stress about and it gives us an opportunity to have these conversations.

most of us have our own signs that we are experiencing stress. for example, i know that when i become more cynical, for example, i am probably experiencing stress because i'm typically not a cynical person. so this can manifest in different ways for different people and it can be that people start to increase the amount that they are drinking. it could be that they are shorter with their kids or coworkers but all of us need to be aware. if you are not aware, simply ask the people around you. they will tell you what are the signs you are experiencing stress? secondly, it is important to do the things that we do to manage stress more generally via exercise, sleep, just fundamental and very important in terms of us having a baseline. around political stress in particular, really being able to manage that and to be much more conscious about how we manage

that. for example, rather than just sitting at your computer or with your phone and going through article after article, you might want to set a time so that you don't look up in one hour or two hours that we have been doing doing scrolling -- doom scrolling, looking at article after article. there are things you can do to make sure you are staying socially connected which we know is a really important way to help us manage our stress. one of the things that is going to be important for this election in particular is knowing that we are probably not going to know the outcome of the election on election night or however many days after that. one of the things that raises our anxiety is uncertainty. so we know that we are going into a period where there may be some uncertainty. we can plan for that. we can plan for the fact that we

may not know and that this is not going to be over so the main thing is to really be conscious about this, to understand some of the strategies that the american psychological association, we put this type -- this kind of information on our website so that people can be much more manageable about strategies they can use to reduce stress. and it is really important to just be aware of how this stress is happening in our lives. >> robin in syracuse, new york. good morning, robin. >> this is bizarre because this election has never affected me this way before. i can deal with it with other people and usually, you can just walk away but when you are from a close group and they have such -- it's not even republican or democrat.

it's just the feelings. it's what they want. you know, they want the united states to go under because they think that we deserve it and i just don't want to talk anymore. i cannot stand it. i can deal with everything else. with a family member i would love and i would give a to me or anything for, i want to block them out of my life and i don't know what to do. thank you. >> yes. you know, and i hear how stressful and distressing that is for you. he said something that was really important, that despite the differences that you have with your family members, you still care deeply about them. and maybe that is the place to start. the issues around the political differences can be that way. many of us have experienced that

and the data shows that. so i would really encourage you to have a conversation that is about agreeing to disagree and agreeing that your relationship with your family members is much more important than the differences that you have from a political standpoint and i would frame the question -- frame the conversation that way because any other way becomes a process where one side is trying to convince the other side and that is probably not going to work. people are pretty set around how they view it but if you can get past that and have that other conversation, that is the place to focus. >> wears some resources? where can individuals go to get more information for callers like robin who is looking for may be how to best handle some of these situations?

>> you go to our website, apa, that is for the american psychological association. you can also go. they have a really great website and they talk about stress there. cdc also has information on stress so there are lots of resources out there but one resource i also want to make sure that we mention is for election workers paid one of the things we are seeing is that election workers are under a tremendous amount of stress. we saw that during the last election and we are seeing that now, sharing reports of people being harassed at polling stations, hearing people having their yards damaged who are election workers so a lot of stress for that group of individuals as well. we created a video to help them manage the stress related to that and to manage difficult situations at the polling place.

you can get that on our youtube channel or you can google election worker and apa and you should be able to find it that way as well. >> fred in riverside, california. good morning, fred. >> good morning. thank you for taking my phone call here. good morning to the guest. good morning. my question was about this term we hear in pop culture called trump derangement syndrome. what is the last politically charged term for that phenomenon and what are some factors that would lead to something like that beyond media consumption? because it seems like when i talked to some kabbalah -- kamala supporters in the black

community, it's a very sassy, angry tone that i get back and i am curious about the real pure review science behind something like that. >> i'm sorry. i did not hear the term that you used. host: he said the trump derangement syndrome. guest: that is a term i have not heard and i am not quite sure exactly what it means. it probably means, based on what i am hearing the caller saying, is that it sounds like it is directed at people who may be supporters of the former president so i am not quite sure what the phenomena is that is being discussed. i would just say that, you know, people throw out terms quite a bit and i think that can be a little dangerous when we start to characterize people in terms of their mental health status. particularly if you don't have training in the area. i'm not quite sure what that term is or how people are using

that term. host: good morning, patty. caller: thank you so much for taking my call. thank you for c-span. thank you for being on today. my question has to do -- we have a multigenerational home here. my daughter and her husband and the grandkids live with us and we all live together. my two granddaughters are now teens, 17 and seem to be 15 girls. i am very politically active. they know that. i helped organize the women's march and i do canvassing and all of that and that helps me cope. something that started happening as i became more aware, because we always try to shelter them, like you know, we never played some speeches on television. we try to shelter them somewhat but have conversations and they bring it up so during covid's when things started to get a

little scary because their grandfather was home and was playing those briefings. and they saw him as crazy so they were getting scared and then they started looking around it like our extended family members who were supporters and now, it is much worse because the 17-year-old and now the 15-year-old, they have more access to social media and they have become aware of statements having to do with trump's attacks on women like the access hollywood tapes so the last few days, it has become worse. the last few weeks, i don't know how to help them cope. they don't know how to look at family members who they are now old enough to understand are actively voting for someone who they have information about that they see as a threat to them and i do not know how to help them

deal with that because i cannot reconcile it myself. you know, so now, i have a 17 and soon to be 15-year-old who just don't know how to cope with knowing that there are people in their lives that would actively vote against their self-interest. how do i help them reconcile that? guest: sure, so one thing to know is that for our children, particularly younger children but even older children, how we manage these issues has a big impact on how they manage them. in fact, the level of stress often impacts on our children so number one, using a role model around these issues is very important. as i was talking earlier about, really trying to separate out the political viewpoints of

family members from how you care about those family members is really important. i think all of us are dealing with this phenomenon that feels like something we have not dealt with before. our political environment is now such that it is impacting our relationship and on our lives beyond the election. that is a new phenomenon. what i would really encourage is to have the conversation, particularly about the point you're making wishes to help us understand how you think differently, so definitely on these issues. i want to understand that as a way of really bridging that gap and bridging that divide people might feel because of the political differences. >> dr. evans wanted to point out that the new stress in america survey also did have some bright

spots. there was a 61% who feel hopeful about the change this election will bring. 59% said hope election will lead to more inclusive society. 77% said they intend to vote in the presidential election and 51% said they feel compelled to volunteer or support causes they value. what can you tell us about the positive aspects of political engagement? guest: one of the is feeling out of control and having a greater sense of psychological control actually is a very important strategy in managing our stress so what is hopeful about the data that you talked about is that half of the people are saying they are going to gauge engage or are engaging -- are going to engage or are engaging

in the process. therefore helping to reduce the anxiety and stress we may be feeling so there is some hope there. earlier, i talked about the data at over 80% of people feel that even though they may disagree with someone, it is still important for them to hear and understand those viewpoints so there is some good news there. and i think we should have hope that because of that, you know, we have a way forward that begins to help reduce some of the impact and stress we are experiencing from the election process. >> andy in north carolina. good, andy. >> good morning. i think that we have been tenderized for 20 something years by the right but it's both sides to where they are stoking

their fear and anger to the point to where everybody is basically my loved ones around me and the ones i go to church with and everything are a bunch of old people that are scared and pissed. and they are acting on this emotion, and it scares me. to evoke emotions instead of giving me facts, i think, is the wrong thing to do, and what i have tried to train myself to do is spend time in the mirror and realize feel, instead of what the actual issue is? that is my biggest thing. i think everybody is scared, and if you are a person on the left you are scared of trump, and if you are a person on the right, you are scared of everybody but trump.

and everybody else is lying, except trump. and i can't wrap my head around that, but i can spend my time in the mirror and judge accordingly. thank you for my call. guest: yeah, well, the caller is saying you cannot say it much better than that. one of the people -- ways people are manipulated around the election is by trying to stoke their emotions. and particularly anger. anger is one of the ways that people used to really get people to take the position they want you to take. so, i think being aware of that is really important, and you said it well in terms of, that is the strategy. and if we can be much more aware of that, that is -- we are less likely to succumb to that. the other thing about that that is important is, really being careful about the sorts of

sources we get information from. our survey said that a majority of people are very concerned about fake news, about how ai can be used to manipulate information, and what is perceived as the source of that information. we are going to have to be much more vigilant about getting our news from sources that are reliable. certainly they may have different viewpoints, but there is a lot of misinformation out there. that misinformation is used to manipulate feelings, and we want to minimize the likelihood that the can happen. host: gina in mississippi. good morning, gina. caller: good morning, dr. evans. the last caller kind of touched on what i wanted to say. i would like to explain, i am a

high-anxiety level person. and it seems what gets my anxiety the most is the untruth that is spoken over the airwaves. you have -- i mean, to get the truth today in politics you have to what? you have to be a political addict. you have to watch everything since the beginning and i am a political junkie. so, since the beginning, when trump came down the escalator i have heard untruths, propagandized against him. and it just gets worse and worse and worse and more and more. and i don't think the media --

maybe they do, but i don't think the media really realizes the effect it is having on the american population. like, they had a lady call in the other day, she was a democrat, and she was literally crying, saying that trump was going to take her social security away from her. which is just a bald-faced lie propagated by the democrats. and it is little things, little things over and over, how they take one word out of a sentence or paragraph and turn it into what they want it to mean. i do believe it is the spin doctor. i think that the lord is watchful and i think the democrats set out to destroy donald trump almost 10 years ago, and now they have turned him into something that is about as satan himself.

and i do believe that the lord is listening and watching, and i do believe that the lord protected him when someone tried to kill him. host: we will get a response from dr. evans. guest: no, a couple of -- you know, a couple of things you said i want to pull out. one of them is that information and people's positions can be mischaracterized. and it happens, both sides of the political spectrum. so, we want to be aware of that, and particularly things that poke at our motions, as the previous callers said. you mentioned your fate. one of the things that when we are talking about how we manage, actually our faith can be a really important resource and support for us. i would also encourage people who are people of faith who have a community of faith that can be supportive to rely on that

community to help sustain you as well. host: dr. evans, the survey also found that 77% of adults said the future of our nation was a significant source of stress in their life. come election day once the dust has settled there is a good chance that 50% of the country will not be happy with the president who has been elected. how can people continue to manage their political-related stress after the election is over? guest: it is going to be important for people to put the election in perspective and the impacts of the election in perspective. one of the things that is driving stress is that the election and its results have been put into existential terms. that if this election does not go my day, it is not the america we know it, it is the end of

life as we know it. he's a stark terms. the reality is that for most of us, even if our person did not get into the white house a lot of things do not change that dramatically. most of us still live in the same home we have. most of our lives are pretty much the same. that is not to say the election is not consequential and important, but for the most part life has not changed. -- changed as dramatically as it is painted prior to the election. i think it is really important to keep that in mind as we are thinking about this. at the end of the day we all want the same things. we want to have life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, you know, as americans. the importance of engaging in the political process, engaging in civic activities becomes even more important. what drives our anxiety and

stress is this feeling of not being in control, the feelings of uncertainty, and the more we can do to actively engage, the more we can do to be involved in and really trying to address the issue that people are concerned about, the better we are going to do post-election. host: fill in northbrook, illinois. good morning, bill. caller: good morning. more of a statement but a question, but you are basically dealing with emotions. 50, 60 years ago we got our information from reading a newspaper. but today we are online, we are constantly bombarded. one message is that each person regardless of the level of education should always ask themselves, what do i think? not what i'm being told on the television to think. or on my computer, but what do i think?