Liberals are more than twice as likely to say they have poor mental health — while conservatives are more than twice as likely to say their mental well-being is “excellent.”
Is it any wonder?
Conservatives promote family and religious values and pro-community messaging. The left is the party of grievance politics and “yes you can’t” messaging.
Now, data collected from the 2022 Cooperative Election Study from Tufts University and reported by statistician and political commentator Nate Silver reveals that, among voters who said their mental health was poor, 45% identified as politically liberal and just 19% were conservatives.
Conversely, those who said they had excellent mental health identified as conservative 51% of the time, while 20% were liberal.
The stark lifestyle differences between the two are illuminating.
For one thing, Democrats have ceded a virtual monopoly on pro-family and pro-religious messaging to Republicans — the very values that can promote life meaning, interpersonal connection and mental well-being.
Conservatives traditionally promote family values, and it’s long been known that people who have other people who rely on them, like spouses and children, fare better than people who only worry about themselves.
Take, for example, Fay Dubinsky, a 28-year-old Zoomer who actually describes herself as a happy member of the most depressed generation on record.
“I take time for myself, but so much of my day is to help others, to take care of my family, to take care of my baby,” Dubinsky, a mother of a two-year-old, told The Post. “People my age, their life is about them, and serving themselves, and always seeking out more pleasure.”
Some 86% of conservatives identify with a religion, according to Pew. And religious people are more likely to self-describe as “very happy” in the United States, likely because they have a connection to a higher purpose beyond the earthly world.
This likewise applies to Dubinsky: “I grew up Jewish and religious, and I think that’s probably one of the reasons that I’m not depressed or anxious. I have so much meaning in my life, and that’s not typical for my generation.”
But it’s also about the messaging coming from conservative politicians about self-reliance and self-confidence, two traits highly associated with mental well-being, according to mental health professionals and organizations alike.
The right traditionally espouses pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps messaging — teaching people they can rely on their hard work and resolve to get by.
On the flip side, Democrats have embraced just about the opposite of all of these values. Self-reliance?The libs aren’t fans.
Identity politics have overtaken the Democratic party, as lefty leaders insist that immutable characteristics like race and gender are constantly holding citizens back from their potential.
Only government intervention — and a vote for their side — can fix it, they claim. It’s the sort of ideology that saw the Biden administration attempt to give out loans exclusively to black farmers. What sort of message does that send?
Or how about the endless insistence that non-white voters would be disenfranchised if voter ID laws were put in place, because they couldn’t possibly be expected to produce identification like everyone else?
Democrats have also become the party of handouts and free things — from student loan forgiveness to endless stimulus checks — implying that Americans can’t get along without their help in a world stacked against them.
“Today the game is rigged — rigged to work for those who have money and power,” Elizabeth Warren declared in her memoir “A Fighting Chance.” It’s an ironic title, considering how the Massachusetts senator is pretty much implying regular Americans don’t have one.
“I was born in a place where your Zip code determines your destiny,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, a graduate of Boston University and nationally famous politician, told her constituents who are from that same area.
And sometimes it’s not even clear who exactly is holding people back … but it’s definitely someone.
“There will be a resistance to your ambition, there will be people who say to you, ‘You are out of your lane.’” Kamala Harris bafflingly said in 2020. “They are burdened by only having the capacity to see what has always been instead of what can be. But don’t you let that burden you.”
There’s a term in psychology called the “locus of control,” which refers to your sense of whether things happen to you or whether you make things happen.
No surprise that the latter — a greater sense of agency — is associated with vastly better mental health. When you stop thinking everything is working against you and start taking power over what you can control, the world becomes a far less scary place.
Unfortunately, the left has taught its voters to externalize their locus of control, according to Greg Lukianoff, co-author of “The Coddling of the American Mind.”
“Progressivism, with its emphasis on victimhood and vulnerability to impersonal forces … weakens the sense of agency and, frankly, contributes to depression and anxiety,” he told The Post. “As the political left reevaluates its strategies on everything from abundance to identity, it should also consider adopting an ideology that empowers individuals, fosters an internal sense of control and doesn’t fuel emotional suffering.”
It’s no wonder, then, that the party of self-pity is also the party of poor mental health.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
