Mental health on left vs right

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Anakin McFly
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Mental health on left vs right

Post by Anakin McFly »

Any idea if it's true that liberals often have a higher rate of mental illnesses like anxiety, depression and PTSD? It often seems that way online (it's usually the left talking about mental health, triggers, safe spaces, ableism, etc while the right ridicules those things). Is it just that those things are usually buried on the right due to its portrayal as weakness?

A Gallup poll suggests that Republicans are much more likely to report their mental health as "excellent" (58%), vs 43% of Independents and 38% of Democrats:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/102943/repub ... thers.aspx

The article mentions the possible factor of minority stress, but shows that the stats hold true even when controlled for demographic factors like race/sex/age/religion/income level/etc. I'm inclined to think that self-reporting is a factor, but from personal experience with people it does seem that poor mental health is far more common on the left, as well as when it comes to personal identification; I don't think I've ever seen a right-leaning person identifying themselves as 'mentally ill' in their profile, whereas I see that all the time on Tumblr and social justice places. (I also have a feeling that doing so hampers the healing progress.)
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