Election 2020: Support candidates when they lose the elections – Psychologist

Clinical Psychologist, Dr. Seth Asafo is calling on close associates of aspiring candidates in this year’s election and the public at large to continue to give support to candidates who lose after declaration of the election results.

In an interview with UniversNews, Dr. Seth Asafo noted that losing an election could come as a ‘shock’ to the aspiring candidates considering the level of optimism they have in winning the election.

It is in such a difficult time of losing an election that the candidates will require support in order not to suffer from depression, he added.

“Defeat comes with a lot of unsettlement but the reality is that it is not something you can just bounce off from today or in a day. Eventually, people will recover from it, they would readjust to what it is, they might put it behind them and then aspire for something else."

“Some people may fall into the state of excessive anguish or excessive sadness clinically which we may call it depression because that feeling of losing might hit them so hard and it is important for people close to them to encourage them by making them understand that inasmuch as you have put in a lot of resources, there is more to life than just political power or ambition as it were,” he admonished.

Dr. Asafo added that “they [losing candidates] will adjust eventually, that is the basic principle of humans. Change causes us to feel unsettled but with change also come resilience and readjustments.”

A total of 17,027,655 registered voters are expected to cast their ballots on Monday, December 7, 2020, in hotly contested presidential and parliamentary elections across the country.

According to the Electoral Commission of Ghana, 33,367 polling stations have been set up across all 16 regions of the country for the exercise.