Colin Sleeper, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Economics, saw the effects on the mental health of people he knew during and after the 2018 Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings held for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, which included testimony from Christine Blasey Ford that she was sexually assaulted by Kavanaugh when they were both teenagers.

And he wondered if the mental health effects of the hearings had a broader effect on the economy.

Sleeper teamed with David van der Goes, associate professor in the Department of Economics, to devise a study using data from Google Trends and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, which administers surveys
about a number of health-related issues throughout the year. They established a system to observe potential correlations between poor mental health days and public interest in sexual assault during and after the Kavanaugh hearings.

According to their paper, published in the journal Social Science and Medicine, women in the United States experienced an average of 0.17 additional poor mental health days, or about four hours, in 2018 from September 13 to October 13, which amounts to an average of
26 million additional days women in the U.S. spent experiencing poor mental health. Researchers found a significant spike in Google Trends data for “sexual assault” during the same 30-day period.

Women surveyed during the 30-day time frame were nearly 10% more likely to report at least one “not good” mental health day, compared to the same time frame in 2014.

The paper, titled “The relationship between mental health and public attention to the Brett Kavanaugh hearings and confirmation,” also estimated the financial implications of those outcomes across society.

Citing previous research on the financial impact of bad mental health, the team estimated women in the country lost a collective $4.17 billion in personal income growth because of the mental health impact of the hearings and the associated scrutinization of sexual assault allegations.

“This estimate is one of several components of the total costs associated with poor mental health days,” van der Goes said. “For example, direct health care costs and missed workdays would increase the total costs to society.”

The authors concluded that regardless of political affiliation, a high level of care should be taken in making similar selections in the future because of their potential to impact society both emotionally and financially.