The exit polls turned out to be right. And whilst Conservative and Scottish Nationalist supporters are ebullient, I’ve lost count of the number of people who have remarked on social media that they feel really depressed.

For the majority saying this, the feeling they are experiencing isn’t depression in any clinical sense. It is disappointment, sadness and loss. It is a normal grief reaction to something shocking and unexpected, which dashes hopes for the future. And it re-introduces and even expands fears that people who were hoping for a better result for Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens and even UKIP had overcome, albeit just for a short while.

The five stages of grief model described by Dr Elizabeth Kubler-Ross was not intended to be prescriptive. It was an extremely well-received description of how people who are terminally ill get used to the idea of their own impending death. The stages of grief described are Shock, Denial, Bargaining, Anger, and Depression, better described perhaps as deep sadness. This, in time, leads to Accommodation/Acceptance. Depending on the nature of one’s loss, grief has to run its course. It is possible to get stuck at any stage, and for stages to have to be repeated. Trying to avoid the anger or sadness phases by keeping busy and pretending to be OK can be psychologically damaging; I have form on this myself.

There will be people today who will undoubtedly be at the start of a significant grief cycle, including the 3 party leaders who have resigned, those who have lost their livelihoods, and those closest to them. For the majority of the population, though, the cycle will pass quite quickly.

Some people are already into the angry phase; this is can be when blame gets sprayed about and bad decisions made. It is a time when we are advised not to make big decisions.

It is also important not to get stuck at the anger phase. Those who have learned to attribute responsibility for bad things that happen to them to others can waste huge amounts of energy re-traumatising themselves and failing to realise their own power to effect positive change.

Some people who experience mental illness get annoyed about the misuse of the term depression to describe feelings they see as relatively trivial compared to the self-hatred and hopelessness of clinical depression. I used to be one of them, but these days I am less fussed. As long as people understand that one word can have many meanings, I am more than happy to share it.  But I do want everyone to understand that there are no such things as happy-pills. If you aren’t clinically depressed, anti-depressants won’t make things better. Only you can do that, by getting to know yourself, and being kind and compassionate to yourself and to others.

It is tough advice, but as Maya Angelou said:

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. 

The brilliant thing about our democratic system, apart of course from actually having one, is that MPs may only be elected by some of their constituents. But they are there to represent all of them. Occasionally they just need reminding.

I’m consoling myself about the the loss of the rainbow coalition I fondly imagined by thinking how to keep mental health on the agenda of the Conservative government, as they promised us during their election campaign. We have to make the business argument that investment in mental health treatment and support saves money in the long run. As well as the compassionate one about saving lives and making those lives worth living.

It is wonderful that there are millions of us who care enough to do the same.