The fact that more Republicans *report* better mental health is not mind-boggling and very possibly attributable to party- and community-specific stigma/normalizing/mainstreaming issues.
If we ignore the potential reporting effect and take the findings as being an indicator of the true mental health situation of the country, it might be interesting to consider the biochemical explanations for mental health problems. It's already widely believed (and scientifically backed) that mental health issues run in families (which will make you more likely to have a problem and more likely to recognize one). It is also true that an individual’s political affiliation is highly correlated with his/her parents’ political affiliation. Both characteristics could be present and passed to the next generation without one being directly related to the other. When and why this persistent relationship originated may be tangentially related to the current findings.
Finally, there's the issue that being a Democrat means feeling more personally responsible for the state of the world (or something to that effect) -- that suffering is a failure of humans. If Democratic Party identification is correlated with a higher degree of idealism, and a higher degree of idealism is correlated with a higher degree of disappointment (and also a sense of failure), then chronic disappointment will be a more common feature in the life of a Democrat. Granted, this guilt/disappointment effect might also hold for a market-oriented Republican who sees suffering as resulting from a failure to construct the best institutions, but it is not a stretch to think it will be weaker, on average.
Or maybe being liberal is just tantamount to being mentally ill!
To summarize:
- Maybe Republicans are equally crazy, but either don't realize it or are less willing to admit it.
- Maybe Republicans are just mentally healthier as a result of some (un)related or historical factor explained in part through genetics and family environment.
- Maybe Democrats set themselves up for depression via social idealism and
disappointment, as opposed to a greater emphasis on practicality and on the
justice of the market.
A worthy response. Unless (1) fully explains the results (which it may), I'm not sure this gets us much closer to understanding the difference. But I'm also not real sure we should care.
Another devoted reader (my roommate) partially sums up (2) and (3) as a difference in what he calls the "Glass-Half-Full" philosophy.
I propose that the entire difference is due to a few leveraged outliers which I call the "Kucinich Effect".
1 comment:
I find the results of this study interesting and concur with much of the posted dialogue, yet overall, must question the relative importance of such data. Caring about the state of the world is exhausting, depressing, and often defeating for republicans and democrats alike. It’s where we tend to invest our concern that varies greatly. There is no solution to many of the worlds’ problems, only options that are better than others. Perhaps democrats are more perplexed by this reality as it affects human’s welfare than are republicans. Democrats, or any humans being’s, supposed desire to care for those less fortunate than themselves does lead to an inevitable state of ‘mental unhealthiness.’ Given the state of the world, can we really blame democrats for feeling this way? I propose that the only way to avoid such feelings is by distancing yourself from the global community and the realities of the world and focusing on superficial measures of health such as money, which allows access to health care, which in turn leads to a vast part of the population buying their health with drugs such as Prozac. I would be interested to know how many of these ‘healthy’ individuals are feeling so because of mood alterations. But regardless of this fact, the deeper problem with this debate lies in the concept of mental health.
More importantly than questioning who feels mentally unhealthy, is questioning what this concept means. We must look at the concept of mental health and the extent to which it matters and permeates this society. How do we define mental health? Mental health is a social construct. It is culturally, ethnically, and economically generated. It cannot be quantitatively or qualitatively analyzed because there is no true concept of mental health. The question of an individuals health in a consumption based and media driven society, such as the US, will be perceived and internalized depending on ones level of commitment and belief in the system. If we chase the infamous ‘American dream’ those who fall short in areas such as monetary income, race, and gender (meaning not the wealthy, white male whom is still the model of success, power, and perhaps even health in this country) and do not posses the means to achieve this ideal will feel the reigns of failure affecting their own personal measure of mental health. I suggest that in this societal system, mental health is in part a measure of success, power, and the ability to feel the freedom of controlling ones future. So undoubtedly, with these social constructs in place, republicans are likely to perceive themselves as being healthier.
Regardless of these realities, the fact that republicans are deemed to be mentally healthier is purely a useless statistic. The classification carries no meaning or significance of any kind to any real value of life, but values are a whole other can of worms. All said and done, no matter what statistics you have, if you present a useless and shallow argument, it is a useless and shallow argument, regardless of who presents it. Republican or Democrat.
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