Mental Health in a Divided Election
An introduction to our podcast series: How to Do Social Justice This Election Season Without Being a Jackass
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This Election season is a bit different, because rather than voting for separate political parties, we're voting for two systems: democracy and autocracy (specifically, a Christian Nationalist theocracy).
Autocratic governments tend to rely on disinformation, propaganda, repression of voter rights, and fear-mongering in order to develop their power. In this election, we primarily see this through the behavior of the 21st century Republican Party. A lot has been written about how the public can ethically respond, and quite frankly, there aren't a lot of great answers for the next 6 months, other than voting en masse.
Each Monday between now until Election Day, we will be releasing a series called "How to Do Social Justice This Election Season Without Being a Jackass."
We'll talk with our guests about how to hold our anger and fear without responding in dehumanizing ways.
There’s an interesting subset of research in the 2000s and 2010s that talked about the mental health of conservatives and liberals nationwide and worldwide. For instance, Catherine Gimbrone and her colleagues at Columbia noted that, in her sample of 17-year olds, teenagers who have more progressive ideologies tend to experience slightly more mental health issues (depression, anxiety, acute stress) than those with conservative ideologies.
George Yancey, professor of sociology at Baylor, noted something similar in adults who took the 2021 Baylor Religion Survey in his article “Identity Politics, Political Ideology, and Well-Being.”
This was a weird article, because Yancey seemed to confuse identity politics with progressive politics. Identity politics is the collection of people with a shared sociodemographic identity, such as gender, class, or race, developing policies and language that exclude other people. Progressive politics are about the advocacy for groups of people who have their rights discriminated against so that we might actually experience a resemblance of equity.
To be fair, there’s definitely an overlap. We’re doing a podcast series because there is an overlap. At their worst, 21st century American progressives rely on identity both to reflect on the abysmal behavior from the Republican Party (and those god-awful White men) and to attempt to conceptualize the civil rights agenda of the Democratic Party, which reinforces and creates new stereotypes for the communities (BIPOC, queer) that it attempts to serve.
But Yancey gathers data by assessing which of six options research participants choose for how to navigate with race division, which speaks to progressive politics. It’s an important topic, and one that Yancey writes quite well about in Beyond Racial Division: A Unifying Alternative to Colorblindness and Antiracism, in which he explores ways that we can have two and three person conversations where all people in the conversation can take accountability for next steps.
His research items don’t address identity politics though. He would have more effectively if his survey items were reflections on the behaviors of sociodemographic identities (i.e. “White women should…”).
Julia and I will talk ad nauseum throughout our podcast series about the negative impact of identity politics’ practice of lumping people into common groups and creating stereotypes.
But for the sake of this Substack article, let’s assume that liberals and progressives are in fact more prone to mental health concerns than conservatives, as Yancey, Gimbrone, and others suggest.
To what extent are these diagnoses a result of “mental health concerns”? And to what extent are these diagnoses a result of honestly engaging with and responding to an increasingly corrupt Republican Party?
For that matter, to what an extent do the higher levels of mental health in conservatives coincide with ignoring the corruption of the Republican Party?
If depression, anxiety, and acute stress are more a result of honest engagement with the corruption of the Republican Party (i.e. through the elimination of abortion and ensuing women’s health options, or the elimination of critical thought initiatives in the education system), rather than a characterological differences between progressives and conservatives, what does that say about our responsibility as therapists?
To answer the third question, practicing coping skills and emotional regulation seem a bit trite when the rights of our community members are being challenged, questioned, and taken away.
However, we can be aware that higher levels of depression, anxiety, and acute stress inform the way that we communicate. The more anxious and stressed we are:
The more likely we are to name-call and blame, perpetuating negative communication cycles.
The more likely we are to make impulsive judgments of other people, relying on stereotypes to define behavior rather than engaging in dyadic communication and relationships.
The more likely we are to be wary of other people, which decreases human interaction and increases isolation and loneliness.
Julia and I don’t have easy answers. We do offer relationship coaching to help couples work through some of the ways that these systems (most notably, Purity Culture and the dictates of Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal religions) have negatively impacted communication and sexuality. Email us at sexvangelicals@gmail.com for more info.
And this fall, we will have seven episodes in which we wrestle through the topic “How to Do Social Justice This Election Season Without Being A Jackass”. We hope that you’ll join us!
Let’s heal together!
Jeremiah and Julia
Love the title! Excited to read more.