I read an article – https://dailycitizen.focusonthefamily.com/conservative-liberal-mental-health-differences/ that reminded me of my friend Dave Olson – to use all of his titles, the reverend David Olson, Ph.D. Dave’s been gone several years – the iron crab got him with esophageal cancer. We worked together, alternating roles at SDSU, and Dave loved studies that demonstrated liberals intellectual superiority over conservatives. The disappointing thing to Dave was that the studies weren’t all that consistent.
So I have another study, and I can’t share it with my old friend because he’s too dead to appreciate it – but, Dave, wherever you are, here’s the gist of this study: “Professor Lauren Van De Hey, of Utah State University, who conducted this study explains, “I further find that there is an emerging mental health political identity that is most pronounced among younger (Gen Z) and more liberal Americans.”
“Psypost.org, in their reporting on Van De Hey’s study, explains, “Approximately one-half of study participants with mental illness stated that their identity as a person with a mental health illness is very important or somewhat important to them.” The study’s author also noted, “I find that the political predictors and political consequences for the emerging mental health identity differ from those for physical disability and serious physical illness categorization and identification.”
Another article I read later produced this chart from the same study:
I’ve met people who announced their DSM disorder as part of their self-description, but it appears that people are taking their personality disorders a bit more seriously, making them a central point of their identity. I tend to believe the criteria would give you a direction on things to change to get healthy – but if you would rather build an identity based on a mental health problem, well, it takes all kinds to make a world, and somehow all of them got into it.
At any rate, I would have enjoyed listening to Dave attack this statement: “Conservatives also reported seeking mental health treatment at lower levels than liberals.” It’s not that I don’t know how he would have responded – too much of our training was virtually identical. But I was reminded of a friend whose commentary I no longer can enjoy.
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