When I lost my Christian faith at the age of 15, therapy culture and far-left ideology swooped in to fill the void (Tumblr was the medium). I’m grateful for CBT techniques and the meditation practice I picked up along the way, and I’m still in therapy now (IFS). But I cringe when I witness fellow liberals treating therapy like it’s a metaphysical framework with which to interpret the world. Because that used to be me!
Advances in the field of mental health have been objectively great for many people suffering from psychological issues. The problem is when therapy masquerades as the transcendent, the alpha and the omega, the point of it all.
I see the cause as a confluence of our cultural woes: hyper-individualism, hyper-immanence, high expectations of consumerist comfort, and intellectualism winning out over the mysteries of the heart and body. And liberals fall prey to it more easily because 1) our focus is more national/global, outside our locus of control, which makes us feel helpless and small, and 2) our belief in immanence over the transcendent fails to relieve us of any spiritual burdens. So we seek comfort where we can find it.
For all my critiques about my Southern Baptist upbringing (and there are many), religion/spirituality is better than medicine/science in making sense of our souls and comforting us in our pain.
Southern Baptists seem to have worse life outcomes than the people who live in “therapy culture” strongholds. Also despite the alleged stereotypes about fat acceptance people in stereotypically liberal areas tend to be thinner in average. Conservative Protestants are one of the heaviest groups, I read in some study. Mental health does correlate to an extent with physical health but this isn’t really reflected in low-quality polls like this. They fail to account for the psychological nature of conservatives and the shame-based mentality they are motivated by, in contrast to the guilt-based mentality of liberals. In shame-based societies like the Middle East, or the Deep South of the USA people are loath to admit weaknesses in anonymously, even if their actual moods indicate the contrary.
To be clear, I haven't been a Southern Baptist since I was 15 and have no intentions of returning to that church, for a variety of reasons. I would argue that the religion itself is only a part of it. In Louisiana where I'm from, you can also point to a lack of economic investment, racial tensions and effective segregation, and corrupt politicking for those worse life outcomes, among other things. Look up "Why Louisiana Stays Poor" to learn all about how politicians have allowed big business to scrape our state of its resources for almost nothing in return. Religion and body size don't tell the whole story.
Yet your state is full of “mentally strong”, “self-reliant” conservatives who don’t believe in any of that pussy-ass liberal therapy culture and it’s certainly served them very well. Somehow conservatives are always coddled by people like you and get a pass for their massive character defects.
I believe ultimately in the agency of the individual, and that the individual is responsible for how they treat others and how they respond to the hand they've been dealt. But I think it's cruel to place the burden of systemic failures entirely on the shoulders of the individual. The systemic failures should be recognized even while the individual is held accountable.
Holy assumption, Batman! It's amazing what you've been able to deduce about my practices from the few words I've spilled here. Better for you to ask me a genuine question in the spirit of curiosity rather than pin me down as "one of those people," which does not a quality conversation make.
Meditation has been counterproductive in my experience for the same reasons as therapy. At least the kind where people "notice their breathing" just made me overthink. To the extent noticing bodily functions was helpful for me it was to reframe emotions. Roughly: Anxiety becomes excitement and depression becomes grieving etc. I now excel in the "mental health" areas where I used to be terrible
That's interesting! I'm a Vipassana meditator, which is essentially a body-scan meditation. But I also do breath-based meditation, which I find helpful in a pinch to quickly reground myself. Meditation has the opposite effect for me. When I practice regularly, I'm less neurotic and solipsistic. Grounding myself internally helps my energy remain more external. Getting off of social media has had a similar effect.
And besides there are these studies showing about all therapy techniques are equally effective, which means they are mainly worthless, it is the personal connection to an empathic person that matters. I wonder whether any pastor or Buddhist lama could do that job.
Jonathan Haidt has done a lot of thinking and writing about the mental health implications of differing political ideologies. In general he posits that ideologies foregrounding an external locus of control (i.e., victimhood) have much poorer mental health outcomes than ideologies centering an internal locus of control (ie self reliance and resilience.).
Traditionally progressives have ceded much more agency to social forces rather than individual action and look to society for solutions. This can coincide with or even encourage feelings of helplessness and resentment. Not good for mental health.
Conservatives are often associated with self reliance but I don’t think that really applies to MAGA which is much more focused on grievance politics. According to Haidt’s theory, MAGA conservatives should also be experiencing a decline in mental health.
In another comment I elaborated about how cultural conservatives, particularly religious ones, are under enormous external and internal pressure to claim that they are very happy with their lives, even if this is not reality.
Yes, you're not the first alienated liberal to talk about that. Whole swathes of Twitter talk about it. Even so, there are all sorts of ways to adjust for this in a good survey. Moreover, this pattern has been too persistent to chalk up to mere lying. If it were simply a manifestation of lying, then it's powerful enough to have lasted 50 years.
My guess is you might well see this sort of effect among the most online sort of Zoomer/Millennial secular rightists. Groyper/incel/4Chan types. Young men who are unhappy anyway, who have underachieved both professionally and romantically.
But probably not normie MAGA Boomers, which populate much of my extended family and my friends' parents. They have this strangely innocent, do-no-evil view of Trump, but that sort of person's locus of control doesn't really seem to have shifted. MAGA isn't all-pervasive in their lives, the way that Therapy Culture is pervasive in the lives and entire worldview of young secular liberals and centrists -- women especially.
Even less so the more reluctant sort of Republican supporters, which include myself and most of my social circles.
I also think it's pretty common, albeit not universal, among leftists to ENCOURAGE others to get depressed over politics
I remember when Taylor Swift announced her engagement to Travis Kelce, and people on the left were saying things like, "Really? With the genocide in Gaza ongoing?"
Again, not all leftists, but it was common enough that my largely apolitical wife, who tries her best to avoid political insanity on both sides, was seeing this sort of thing all over Taylor Swift discussions and bringing it up to me. This sort of behavior would, of course, be viewed as insane on the right, I think even among extraordinarily MAGA types.
MAGA Boomers/GenX'ers are most certainly experiencing mental health crisises, but growing up with these folks I know how they are taught from a young age that being weak or vulnerable is unacceptable, and that their religion or lifestyle is 100% the perfect road to happiness, and sinful doubt is not allowed.
GenZ lefties are the polar opposite, wearing their fragility on their sleeves, and constantly identifying new mental health struggles for themselves.
If only everyone could walk the narrow road, by being honest about who you are and what you're going through, seek help when it's really necessary, but for the most part simply gird up your loins and do your best in life.
Yes, they are not those kinds of conservatives who believe in boothstraps. They are those kinds who believe they can only be internationally competitive with tariffs and kicking out undocumented workers. Not a very confident position.
MAGA describe almost everyone who considers themself conservative as of the last election. I would say you need to face the reality that the left has bad mental health outcomes.
There is nothing conservative about MAGA—it wants to burn everything down, including the US Constitution. Just listen to Steve Bannon or watch the news. The true conservatives are the “normie” Republicans Independents and conservative Democrats who still value the rule of law. Andrew Sullivan, who kicked this off, is a true conservative and he is the opposite of MAGA.
"MAGA is not REAL conservatism" = No true Scotsman fallacy
I think a better way to see this is "MAGA is conservatism, but it is a perverted form of conservatism, bereft of any of the moral or intellectual thoughfulness contained in conservatism's pre-Trump form."
But keep in mind, old-school conservatism had been in decline for sometime. And the anti-intellectual sentiment in the Republican Party had been growing amongst the base, so Trump or someone like him was to some degree inevitable.
When I use the word conservative I refer to the root “conserve” in relation to the status quo. In this sense, MAGA might be conservative on social issues but is radical on political and economic ones. MAGA fascism, the corrupt personalization of the administrative state, crony capitalism, rejection of the post WWII order and mercantilist trade policies are deeply radical.
I get where you are coming from, but it's analagous to if say in the 1970's most Catholics believed X, but in the 2020's that is no longer the case. And if an old timer were to say "today's Catholics aren't REAL Catholics because they aren't like the ones in the 70's", I think most people would take issue with that.
MAGA/Trumpism may have departed from the liturgy and spirit of Reaganite conservatism, but it still is "conservatism" in that it is deeply opposed to the ideas of modern liberalism.
In fact, I think you could make an argument that MAGA is actually MORE conservative than Reaganite conservatism, because the latter is arguably just an older form of Liberalism (classical), and many MAGA beliefs are similar to older Paleoconservative and isolationist beliefs from the pre-WW2 era. Similarly, the fundamental disrespect for good faith, procedure, science & knowledge, and government institutions that are within MAGA/Trumpism are often compared to the 19th Century Know-Nothing Party.
Additionally, the idea that Trump considers himself to be a sort of royal leader with divine authority is a throwback to the pre-Revolutionary Era itself, with his most right-wing backers celebrating the idea of overthrowing democracy itself and returning humanity to a quasi-medieval state.
I think we’re substantively on the same page and wrangling over semantics. I get the No True Scotsman argument, but there comes a point when the evolution morphs into a rupture. Take the Chinese Communist Party. While it still calls itself that, the communist part is dead as a doornail.
I think MAGA unrestrained would result in a similar rupture. Maybe it hasn’t happened completely yet but we’re on the way to a system that is more reminiscent of Russia today.
I’m a classical liberal, not a progressive, and my beliefs resemble erstwhile Republican beliefs far more than MAGA. I hate political sciency discussions because they always devolve into semantics.
I’m just saying half of America voted for Trump and pretty much all conservatives, so there is a lot that’s conservative about maga. No insane gender norms, sexual ethics, better abortion policy, no insane immigration, no DEI stuff—That’s a steep exaggeration to say that there’s nothing conservative about maga. Biden was considering adding more SC justices and just was the compete opposite on all of these issues. Yes both sides have some things that challenge the constitution, but let’s not engage in all or nothing thinking like “there’s nothing conservative about maga.”
Disprove any of them. He’s been accused of harassing students and that organization he founded gets money from right wing think tanks. He’s a saner and less gay version of Jordan Peterson.
Friendly reminder : the burden of proof lies with the prosecution. It's up to you to prove that what you're claiming is true, not up to your interlocutor to prove that you're wrong.
How much did you consider that conservatives are more likely to lie about their mental health? The people who say depression isn't real, are mostly conservative, and would never check a box that says anything close to "I'm depressed." In my own life I've seen these type of conservatives show several signs of poor mental health all while maintaining the belief that mental health is basically made up, they pretty much lie to themselves about their mental state.
Also, if it were the case that "therapy culture" was bad for mental health, that wouldn't say anything about therapy itself, maybe I missed it but I didn't see a question on the survey "do you go to therapy?" but that may be because Richard is familiar with the evidence for therapy's success.
I think you're onto something by bringing up the subjectivity of survey responses. I am also deeply skeptical of Richard's study, not because it's poorly designed, but because self-reported mental health is so epistemically tricky.
I completely disagree with your assertion that "conservatives are more likely to lie about their mental health," and I'm not even sure that it is possible to collect evidence about that question.
"Depression" has no objective definition. The DSM criteria are largely dependent on the patient's own reports about their mental states. If someone says they don't feel sad, I don't think there's any way for you to gainsay that. People are complicated. If I'm listless and withdrawn, my subjective experience could be the same as yours when you exhibit those characteristics, or it could be totally different. I'm not a nihilist -- I think that mental states exist in objective reality. I'm just saying we can't currently observe them directly.
But the even bigger problem is that your beliefs about your mental states partly determine your mental states, because they're all part of the same mind. It seems totally plausible that the belief "mental health is basically made up" would radically alter your mental experience of the physical aspects of depression vs. a world where you believe that mental health is a very important concept.
So I would summarize the problem with Richard's thesis not as "conservatives lie more," but "conservative beliefs actually cause people to have different mental experiences, and to talk about them differently in surveys, even if at some objective sensory level they are having the same bodily experience. So do beliefs about everything else."
So you would say conservatives report their beliefs inaccurately because they have some sort of mental blind spot as a result of purposely not thinking about their mental health? I guess when I say lie, maybe I don't mean their trying to trick people, It could be a self deluded mental state.
Also, it would be complicated, but there is likely ways to see if people with the same mental state report that state differently on a survey (correlating with political ideology). You would ask questions to find out how social they are, if they are part of any organized groups, etc. basically things we know cause good mental states. Then, if a democrat and a republican answer those questions the same, but their overall mental health "score" is way different, we then have evidence that there's some disconnect on their side from their mental experience to how it's reported.
No, I'm saying they may be reporting their mental states accurately, but their minds relate to their bodies in a different way, such that the terms "depression" or "poor mental health" mean something completely different to them than those terms mean to you. I doubt you or anyone else can come up with a rigorous definition of those terms that doesn't ultimately have to assume the accuracy of patient self-report.
How do we know that being part of organized groups, being social, etc. cause good mental states? Since we can't observe people's subjective consciousness, we can only know this because they are correlated in a group, or many groups, of survey responses from patients and research subjects -- and because it fits our own subjective experience. If you then encounter a large group or set of groups of people whose survey responses do NOT demonstrate this correlation, and claim that it does NOT fit their subjective experience, this is just as much evidence against the universality of the correlation as it is evidence that that second group is lying.
Put another way: "depressed but doesn't know it" is only a meaningful concept in hindsight. In the moment, a person cannot be said to be depressed if they deny experiencing anything that could be called depression.
"this is just as much evidence against the universality of the correlation as it is evidence that that second group is lying."
We can say with high certainty the things I listed (eg. being social) have strong causal power for positive mental health because it has been reported on mass without any clear incentive for people to lie about it.
Would you agree that there is some incentive for conservatives to lie about their mental health being better than it is, due to the politicization of mental health and therapy culture?
The victim mentality is one of the foundations of progressive politics. When one thinks that we live under a fascist dictatorship, that the planet is doomed, that racism underlies every single interpersonal relationships, I don't think it's irrational to think that people with such views are, on average, the worst off in terms of mental health.
Why does everyone just accept the frame that "happiness" is the goal of life?
I want to achieve real things. Career success, physical health, better friendships and romantic relationships, better at hobbies...
You may call it vanity but its quite the opposite. You are helping people around you. Going to a psychologist or meditating in a room is inward and selfish. And it doesn't even work. I think most people would be much happier and more helpful to those around them if they just tried to accomplish real things.
I broadly agree but I think it's easy to overdo it too. I think "helping the people around you" and "career success" are worthy goals, but people should be limited in their willingness to sacrifice their own happiness for those goals (the optimal level of sacrifice isn't zero but it's also not infinite).
I think your own happiness is real, and roughly as important as, eg, your physical health or your friendships, and more so than say hobbies.
Would be interesting to look cross-culturally or cross-temporally too. My sense is that the association of left wing political beliefs with therapy culture is relatively spatiotemporally localized. Is it just the contemporary anglosphere? Were French leftists in the 80s believers in therapy culture? I'm not sure, but your theory predicts that if we go to times/places where the association doesn't exist, then left wing political beliefs should be less strongly correlated with poor mental health. Strikes me as plausible, though I don't know if good data exists to test.
There is a certain difference between self-awareness and neurotic self-consciousness just as there is a difference between positivity and "ignorance is bliss."
I agree with RH's take here - I agreed with it before I saw the survey data. But I think there can sometimes be multiple effects in play, and one of them I theorize is that conservatives essentially lie or embellish the degree to which they are happy/content in life - at least in a relative sense to liberals.
Growing up Southern Baptist, there was a strong push by leaders in the chuch for members to claim that because we knew Jesus, we were happy all the time. In fact, there is literally a children's worship song I recall where the lyrics said that because I found Jesus I was hap-hap-happy all the time!
But I think that this is actually a bigger more society-wide thing that affects more than just one denomination. Conservative religious people are under enormous pressure both internally and externally to claim that they made the right choice, believed in the right version of God, live in the right kind of family, had the right number of children, etc.
Essentially, the social incentive framework for conservatives is inverse to that of liberals. While Liberals are incentivized to celebrate their own fragility, their mental health problems, depression, victimization, doomerism, etc. Conservatives, particularly religious ones, are incentivized to do the opposite, even if they don't really feel it - to be tough, independent, resilent, absolute certainty, etc.
So that is why I don't think we can 100% trust conservatives when they say they are happy and doing great. Because there is significant shame for them in not being happy and doing great. Just like admitting that sometimes you don't feel like God is there means that you are an evil sinful backslider that has lost his salvation.
You're not wrong about the incentives. But there's also a feedback loop where focusing on positive feelings tends to make you feel better and focusing on negative makes you feel worse. It's very tricky to separate cause from effect here.
I emphasize "tends," because of course there are cases where it goes the other way -- e.g., when there is some concrete reason to feel unhappy and you're trying to suppress that feeling rather than work through it or address the cause. But as a default state, looking for things to feel positive about is going to result in better outcomes than looking for things to feel negative about.
I am 23 so I can offer a Gen Z perspective here. When I was entering high school there was a massive wave of therapy culture. Many people my age listened to 'emo rappers' who sang about how depressed and sad they were (Juice Wrld, XXXtentacion, little peep). Many teenagers look for something to identify with to make them unique. Being a tragically misunderstood, depressed teenager was one of those things. Many people my age almost seemed to want their life to be worse so they can more convincingly be a mysterious, depressed loner.
At the same time there was a subculture about using your "mental illness" as kind of a personality trait. Many girls in high school would use words from clinical therapy and associate their traits/ actions as being a result of ocd/depression/adhd/their trauma etc. Many also seemed to believe that everyone has some type of mental health problem and by openly acknowledging yours you are being smart and helping the problem by 'talking about it and ending the stigma'.
Similarly, while bullying is rarer in my generation than previous ones many people would instead make fun of themselves. Joking about how depressed, sad, or even suicidal they were. In music class I had a friend who would always show me memes from this subreddit, r/2meirl4meirl, that was just endless, ironic memes about being depressed and suicidal. Even at the time my 14-year-old self could see how counter productive this was and how it created a self-fulfilling prophecy.
That's not to say everyone was depressed. I played various sports in high school and no one who played sports seemed to have this therapy culture problem. As well peers who were more popular seemed much less likely to identify with this culture.
I think the problem still exists, but has gotten better since I was in high school. Entering the workforce and working primarily with middle-aged men has also really revealed how unique this therapy culture problem is for Gen Z/millenials.
Therapy culture has a massive negativity bias and encourages people to think about all the bad things in their life more than they would naturally (e.g. trauma). If this doesn't make people genuinely feel worse, it at least makes them report worse moods.
In RH's survey, very conservative people were +0.5 mental health & very liberal were -0.25, it seems obvious that this doesn't reflect reality. Assuming there was actually a gap this clear & the defining difference was political identity, I think the difference would be common knowledge based off interactions with people who support either party. Mental health does get reflected through behaviour especially on the extremes, and a difference of 0.75 points in a 2 point range would be easy to pick up on, it would likely be something everyone would report experiencing if asked to ponder interactions with very liberal/conservative people. Remember, the further you move towards "very" any political group, the more likely it is that the individual who is very (insert group) is out spoken about their beliefs, therefore it would be easier for people to pick up on extreme differences in mental health when pondering interactions with such individuals. Of course, I see no evidence people are picking up on such a phenomenon, and I see evidence against it, which makes me skeptical that the difference is real. The first thing that came to mind from my anecdotes (I know their worthless) is that very conservative individuals won't admit obviously felt negative emotions. Someone who says depression isn't real, and "this generation is too soft" (ie. someone who's world view includes a stark opposition to therapy culture) would likely prefer to lie about their mental state than admit the have depression.
Side note/addition: Since therapy culture has somehow become politicized, it becomes exceedingly more likely that people don't think rationally about it
Every one of these terrible studies fail to acknowledge the possibility that the participants will outright lie about their wellbeing in order to avoid losing face.
For example, if they are religious they may believe that God observes them all the time. Then there is no such thing as answering something anonymously.
Nobody likes to even say those things out loud, even to themselves. These people are loathe to admit any kind of weakness, which is covered up with machismo and to a lesser extent religion.
as someone who wanted to become an academiacel, I'm seething in jealousy at the ability to essentially DIY a study on just Twitter followers. Sure, there are tons of limits that you've outlined, but it's honestly still methodologically better than most social psych research, plus it's actually interesting.
Depending on timing of the research, there's a simpler reason why left-leaning people, particularly Americans, might average more stressed, worried, anxious, depressed etc. than right-leaning Americans.
The current government is doing things that are either wonderful, overdue, and values- affirming or perverted, evil, dangerous and regressive, depending on where you stand on the political spectrum. It's no surprise that those who feel vindicated rather than threatened are feeling a lot better right now.
I'd certainly feel better if I believed cities were violent hell holes, with ICE agents bravely removing only the worst of the troublemakers, at some risk to their own lives. I'd feel better if I looked forward happily to an uptick in enforcement of "Christian values", aka my own values. Etc. etc. somewhat as nauseam.
I made this point in a comment above, but I think there's an element here that the left LEANS INTO depression over politics. In some cases even ENCOURAGING people to be depressed over politics. "How can you be happy at a time like this?" Cf. some of the reactions over Taylor Swift's engagement.
Also comments about "not wanting to bring a child into a world like this, etc." I have heard this multiple times from leftists IRL, and I've heard it cited since the Reagan Administration. Or the old classic: threatening to leave the country if a Republican wins the election. That one might date back to GWB, but maybe it was said under Reagan as well.
While some take it to greater extremes than others, a lot of things like this are just normalized on the left, and have been for a very long time, and not just by online weirdos. Yet this attitude would be very weird on the right, to the point I've never heard it spoken aloud by a rightist.
The closest I can think of is online far rightists complaining about normie conservatives' obsession over "sportsball" on the Internet. But again, I'm surrounded by those sports-crazy normie conservatives, this is the sea I swim in, the "sportsball" talk is very niche, very easy to ignore.
Some of this is probably the effect of the religious gulf between right and left. Though there also seems to be a difference in how the left treats politics as a substitute religion, and how the right does.
Your theory would predict, then, that leftists are more depressed when rightists are in power, and vice versa. I strongly suspect, and I think the evidence from Haidt and others would suggest that these mood-ideology correlations are much more stable than this.
Or like regards like you fail to acknowledge, that people lie compulsively and conservatives are psychologically motivated by shame avoidance and can’t admit to these things even anonymously. Haidt is a hack.
I think your view is logically defensible, and I'm fairly sympathetic to it! But if you don't accept people's reports about their internal experiences, then you need to bite the bullet and throw out a pretty large chunk of the social sciences.
The replication crisis was partly because they used data like this, but the Heterodox Academy grifters are using the same shoddy social science practices to make people on the center-left look bad.
I had that thought for sure, but the data shows the difference existed even before authoritarianism was as normalized. I think someone who aggressively opposes trump could be in a bad mood when looking at the news, but I think it would mostly stop at mood, and not bleed into overall mental health. Like I don't think anyone is clinically depressed because of Trump.
Yeah. It's possible that if I'd read the OP more attentively, I'd have found study dates that blatantly falsified my hypothesis.
Mostly where I'm coming from is the observation that most of the people I know are unhappy and/or scared and/or angry, currently, and showing signs of unusual (for them) stress, similar to what I saw as a mailing list moderator after 9/11.
The people I know mostly range from middle of the road through lala-land left wing, and the few right wingers of my acquaintance have mostly dropped out of communication since covid. So I'm mostly guessing as to what right wing people are feeling currently, or how they may be acting - I use blogs, including this one, to get a tiny window into right wing opinion and experience. But I'd have to be blind not to see signs of unusual stress from most of the people I know, even those not pre-occupied with escape, resistance, or bemoaning the current situation.
I also see them in myself; I've got precious little accomplished in the days immediately after any significant escalation.
Fair enough. I think there's something to what you say, and I agree that many left-leaning people express a lot of distress related to the state of civil society. However, I wonder if mood and long-term outlook aren't often upstream of external events. It's the flipside of hedonic adaptation. My experience and a fair amount of psychological research evidence shows that people with negative valence will usually find a way to be unhappy about the world and their lives, whether things are going objectively better than at some prior period, or not.
I appreciate that Hanania somewhat separates therapy itself from therapy culture, as the former existed for a long time before the explosion of the latter. Can we imagine a version of therapy that is less fundamentally left-wing or liberal? It seems to me that part of the problem is that the field of therapy has become captured by an ideology which is not necessarily essential to it. I've heard anecdotes from more conservative people who consider or even try therapy but find the environment unwelcoming or discouraging of real honesty. The same goes for those studying to become therapists. There have been and still are conservative therapists and clients; I would be curious to see what their perspectives would reveal.
Freya India has made some insightful commentary on the degree to which therapy culture and therapists often pathologize conservatism itself. Many clients are encouraged to always prioritize their own needs, set "boundaries" which amount to willfully estranging themselves from friends and family, and taught that there are real solutions and fulfillment waiting for them if they can just journey deeper into themselves, and take some pills while they're at it. If a devout Christian housewife and mother of five went to a therapist in the nearest big city, she would likely be encouraged to question the fact that she considers her duty to her husband, children, family, and God more important than fulfilling than any of her own interests or needs. If she decided that is her genuine desire, or even refused to frame her lifestyle in those terms, would that be accepted? Or would her therapist secretly think of her as a pathetic victim?
Therapy is inherently individualistic to a degree, but I imagine we can cultivate a version of it which more effectively teaches people to turn toward their family and community, take responsibility for their choices, seek purpose beyond simple "happiness," etc. without denying the existence of certain mental health challenges and treatments outright.
If you looked at the pretty shocking APA clinical guidelines for the treatment of boys and men you would run a hundred miles. Especially given the contrast with the same document for girls and women which is a victimology fest.
Other possible factor "X" could be "life is hard, deal with it" vs. "it is society's fault"; people with the first outlook would be more prone to accept frustration and suffering as an inevitability, and don't think much about that (then, less depression, etc.; if your problems are unsolvable, they are nor really problems but some fixed constant of the universe), and also be more conservative; people with the second outlook are more prone to be progressive, and also to complain about the "unfairness" of life (instead of accepting it as natural like the rain or the gravity), then moe sadness, depression, etc.
Therapy culture, from my vantage point, seems like a necessary answer to "what is the soul"? Not that it is a correct answer, but that people need an answer to the question.
Now if you're a secular materialist, you can say "there is no soul," and that's your answer. But for most people, that's not satisfying. Religious people have an answer. Liberals struggle with this.
Of course, therapy culture is not mutually exclusive with Christianity, for example. One can engage in both simultaneously. But it does seem that the investigation into "what is the soul" is an inherently painful one. Either because suffering leads us to that question, or because the question itself reveals suffering we did not know was there.
At some point, there is a Zen-like acceptance possible that to look inward toward the soul is a narcissistic nothingness. It is a series of questions without answers, because it is not a true substance, but an illusion. There are multiple ways of achieving this conclusion, either through a theistic or non-theistic vantage point, but this seems to be the conclusion that the ancients came to.
When I lost my Christian faith at the age of 15, therapy culture and far-left ideology swooped in to fill the void (Tumblr was the medium). I’m grateful for CBT techniques and the meditation practice I picked up along the way, and I’m still in therapy now (IFS). But I cringe when I witness fellow liberals treating therapy like it’s a metaphysical framework with which to interpret the world. Because that used to be me!
Advances in the field of mental health have been objectively great for many people suffering from psychological issues. The problem is when therapy masquerades as the transcendent, the alpha and the omega, the point of it all.
I see the cause as a confluence of our cultural woes: hyper-individualism, hyper-immanence, high expectations of consumerist comfort, and intellectualism winning out over the mysteries of the heart and body. And liberals fall prey to it more easily because 1) our focus is more national/global, outside our locus of control, which makes us feel helpless and small, and 2) our belief in immanence over the transcendent fails to relieve us of any spiritual burdens. So we seek comfort where we can find it.
For all my critiques about my Southern Baptist upbringing (and there are many), religion/spirituality is better than medicine/science in making sense of our souls and comforting us in our pain.
Southern Baptists seem to have worse life outcomes than the people who live in “therapy culture” strongholds. Also despite the alleged stereotypes about fat acceptance people in stereotypically liberal areas tend to be thinner in average. Conservative Protestants are one of the heaviest groups, I read in some study. Mental health does correlate to an extent with physical health but this isn’t really reflected in low-quality polls like this. They fail to account for the psychological nature of conservatives and the shame-based mentality they are motivated by, in contrast to the guilt-based mentality of liberals. In shame-based societies like the Middle East, or the Deep South of the USA people are loath to admit weaknesses in anonymously, even if their actual moods indicate the contrary.
To be clear, I haven't been a Southern Baptist since I was 15 and have no intentions of returning to that church, for a variety of reasons. I would argue that the religion itself is only a part of it. In Louisiana where I'm from, you can also point to a lack of economic investment, racial tensions and effective segregation, and corrupt politicking for those worse life outcomes, among other things. Look up "Why Louisiana Stays Poor" to learn all about how politicians have allowed big business to scrape our state of its resources for almost nothing in return. Religion and body size don't tell the whole story.
Yet your state is full of “mentally strong”, “self-reliant” conservatives who don’t believe in any of that pussy-ass liberal therapy culture and it’s certainly served them very well. Somehow conservatives are always coddled by people like you and get a pass for their massive character defects.
I believe ultimately in the agency of the individual, and that the individual is responsible for how they treat others and how they respond to the hand they've been dealt. But I think it's cruel to place the burden of systemic failures entirely on the shoulders of the individual. The systemic failures should be recognized even while the individual is held accountable.
But that principle is only practiced when it comes to making excuses for white Southern conservatives and not other groups by people like you.
Holy assumption, Batman! It's amazing what you've been able to deduce about my practices from the few words I've spilled here. Better for you to ask me a genuine question in the spirit of curiosity rather than pin me down as "one of those people," which does not a quality conversation make.
I guess I missed the part where she mentioned “ pussy-ass liberal therapy culture…”
She’s implying it.
No, you are deliberately mischaracterizing her statements out of malicious intent.
Your tactics say far more about you than about her.
Just to reiterate, I am a liberal who sees a therapist weekly.
Meditation has been counterproductive in my experience for the same reasons as therapy. At least the kind where people "notice their breathing" just made me overthink. To the extent noticing bodily functions was helpful for me it was to reframe emotions. Roughly: Anxiety becomes excitement and depression becomes grieving etc. I now excel in the "mental health" areas where I used to be terrible
That's interesting! I'm a Vipassana meditator, which is essentially a body-scan meditation. But I also do breath-based meditation, which I find helpful in a pinch to quickly reground myself. Meditation has the opposite effect for me. When I practice regularly, I'm less neurotic and solipsistic. Grounding myself internally helps my energy remain more external. Getting off of social media has had a similar effect.
I see you already made the same point as my comment. I should have read it first before writing my own. Apologies.
No need to apologize! Our responses overlapped, but they were distinct.
And besides there are these studies showing about all therapy techniques are equally effective, which means they are mainly worthless, it is the personal connection to an empathic person that matters. I wonder whether any pastor or Buddhist lama could do that job.
Jonathan Haidt has done a lot of thinking and writing about the mental health implications of differing political ideologies. In general he posits that ideologies foregrounding an external locus of control (i.e., victimhood) have much poorer mental health outcomes than ideologies centering an internal locus of control (ie self reliance and resilience.).
Traditionally progressives have ceded much more agency to social forces rather than individual action and look to society for solutions. This can coincide with or even encourage feelings of helplessness and resentment. Not good for mental health.
Conservatives are often associated with self reliance but I don’t think that really applies to MAGA which is much more focused on grievance politics. According to Haidt’s theory, MAGA conservatives should also be experiencing a decline in mental health.
My theory about conservatives basically lying/embellishing in these survey's could explain this.
Conservatives do embellish, but it's hard for conservatives to lie and embellish on a massive scale to a bunch of academic pollsters.
In another comment I elaborated about how cultural conservatives, particularly religious ones, are under enormous external and internal pressure to claim that they are very happy with their lives, even if this is not reality.
Yes, you're not the first alienated liberal to talk about that. Whole swathes of Twitter talk about it. Even so, there are all sorts of ways to adjust for this in a good survey. Moreover, this pattern has been too persistent to chalk up to mere lying. If it were simply a manifestation of lying, then it's powerful enough to have lasted 50 years.
My guess is you might well see this sort of effect among the most online sort of Zoomer/Millennial secular rightists. Groyper/incel/4Chan types. Young men who are unhappy anyway, who have underachieved both professionally and romantically.
But probably not normie MAGA Boomers, which populate much of my extended family and my friends' parents. They have this strangely innocent, do-no-evil view of Trump, but that sort of person's locus of control doesn't really seem to have shifted. MAGA isn't all-pervasive in their lives, the way that Therapy Culture is pervasive in the lives and entire worldview of young secular liberals and centrists -- women especially.
Even less so the more reluctant sort of Republican supporters, which include myself and most of my social circles.
I also think it's pretty common, albeit not universal, among leftists to ENCOURAGE others to get depressed over politics
I remember when Taylor Swift announced her engagement to Travis Kelce, and people on the left were saying things like, "Really? With the genocide in Gaza ongoing?"
Again, not all leftists, but it was common enough that my largely apolitical wife, who tries her best to avoid political insanity on both sides, was seeing this sort of thing all over Taylor Swift discussions and bringing it up to me. This sort of behavior would, of course, be viewed as insane on the right, I think even among extraordinarily MAGA types.
MAGA Boomers/GenX'ers are most certainly experiencing mental health crisises, but growing up with these folks I know how they are taught from a young age that being weak or vulnerable is unacceptable, and that their religion or lifestyle is 100% the perfect road to happiness, and sinful doubt is not allowed.
GenZ lefties are the polar opposite, wearing their fragility on their sleeves, and constantly identifying new mental health struggles for themselves.
If only everyone could walk the narrow road, by being honest about who you are and what you're going through, seek help when it's really necessary, but for the most part simply gird up your loins and do your best in life.
Yes, they are not those kinds of conservatives who believe in boothstraps. They are those kinds who believe they can only be internationally competitive with tariffs and kicking out undocumented workers. Not a very confident position.
MAGA describe almost everyone who considers themself conservative as of the last election. I would say you need to face the reality that the left has bad mental health outcomes.
There is nothing conservative about MAGA—it wants to burn everything down, including the US Constitution. Just listen to Steve Bannon or watch the news. The true conservatives are the “normie” Republicans Independents and conservative Democrats who still value the rule of law. Andrew Sullivan, who kicked this off, is a true conservative and he is the opposite of MAGA.
"MAGA is not REAL conservatism" = No true Scotsman fallacy
I think a better way to see this is "MAGA is conservatism, but it is a perverted form of conservatism, bereft of any of the moral or intellectual thoughfulness contained in conservatism's pre-Trump form."
But keep in mind, old-school conservatism had been in decline for sometime. And the anti-intellectual sentiment in the Republican Party had been growing amongst the base, so Trump or someone like him was to some degree inevitable.
When I use the word conservative I refer to the root “conserve” in relation to the status quo. In this sense, MAGA might be conservative on social issues but is radical on political and economic ones. MAGA fascism, the corrupt personalization of the administrative state, crony capitalism, rejection of the post WWII order and mercantilist trade policies are deeply radical.
I get where you are coming from, but it's analagous to if say in the 1970's most Catholics believed X, but in the 2020's that is no longer the case. And if an old timer were to say "today's Catholics aren't REAL Catholics because they aren't like the ones in the 70's", I think most people would take issue with that.
MAGA/Trumpism may have departed from the liturgy and spirit of Reaganite conservatism, but it still is "conservatism" in that it is deeply opposed to the ideas of modern liberalism.
In fact, I think you could make an argument that MAGA is actually MORE conservative than Reaganite conservatism, because the latter is arguably just an older form of Liberalism (classical), and many MAGA beliefs are similar to older Paleoconservative and isolationist beliefs from the pre-WW2 era. Similarly, the fundamental disrespect for good faith, procedure, science & knowledge, and government institutions that are within MAGA/Trumpism are often compared to the 19th Century Know-Nothing Party.
Additionally, the idea that Trump considers himself to be a sort of royal leader with divine authority is a throwback to the pre-Revolutionary Era itself, with his most right-wing backers celebrating the idea of overthrowing democracy itself and returning humanity to a quasi-medieval state.
I think we’re substantively on the same page and wrangling over semantics. I get the No True Scotsman argument, but there comes a point when the evolution morphs into a rupture. Take the Chinese Communist Party. While it still calls itself that, the communist part is dead as a doornail.
I think MAGA unrestrained would result in a similar rupture. Maybe it hasn’t happened completely yet but we’re on the way to a system that is more reminiscent of Russia today.
I’m a classical liberal, not a progressive, and my beliefs resemble erstwhile Republican beliefs far more than MAGA. I hate political sciency discussions because they always devolve into semantics.
I’m just saying half of America voted for Trump and pretty much all conservatives, so there is a lot that’s conservative about maga. No insane gender norms, sexual ethics, better abortion policy, no insane immigration, no DEI stuff—That’s a steep exaggeration to say that there’s nothing conservative about maga. Biden was considering adding more SC justices and just was the compete opposite on all of these issues. Yes both sides have some things that challenge the constitution, but let’s not engage in all or nothing thinking like “there’s nothing conservative about maga.”
Jonathan Haidt is Epstein-esque perverted hack who is on the payroll of right wing think tanks.
Not helpful evidence-free comment
Disprove any of them. He’s been accused of harassing students and that organization he founded gets money from right wing think tanks. He’s a saner and less gay version of Jordan Peterson.
You sound like an open minded guy. 🤣
Why don’t you actually disprove me instead of engaging in passive aggression?
Friendly reminder : the burden of proof lies with the prosecution. It's up to you to prove that what you're claiming is true, not up to your interlocutor to prove that you're wrong.
I couldn't find any evidence of this online. I think this is just rumor/BS.
Also, I don't think hating on J. Haidt is going to go over very well on RH's substack, a haven for disaffected Republicans and other centrists.
Also a haven for alt-right and neo-reactionary race-obsessed weirdos.
Arguably RH is one of those weirdos, or at least certainly was at one time.
I agree with your distinction
Great point — strongly agree
How much did you consider that conservatives are more likely to lie about their mental health? The people who say depression isn't real, are mostly conservative, and would never check a box that says anything close to "I'm depressed." In my own life I've seen these type of conservatives show several signs of poor mental health all while maintaining the belief that mental health is basically made up, they pretty much lie to themselves about their mental state.
Also, if it were the case that "therapy culture" was bad for mental health, that wouldn't say anything about therapy itself, maybe I missed it but I didn't see a question on the survey "do you go to therapy?" but that may be because Richard is familiar with the evidence for therapy's success.
I think you're onto something by bringing up the subjectivity of survey responses. I am also deeply skeptical of Richard's study, not because it's poorly designed, but because self-reported mental health is so epistemically tricky.
I completely disagree with your assertion that "conservatives are more likely to lie about their mental health," and I'm not even sure that it is possible to collect evidence about that question.
"Depression" has no objective definition. The DSM criteria are largely dependent on the patient's own reports about their mental states. If someone says they don't feel sad, I don't think there's any way for you to gainsay that. People are complicated. If I'm listless and withdrawn, my subjective experience could be the same as yours when you exhibit those characteristics, or it could be totally different. I'm not a nihilist -- I think that mental states exist in objective reality. I'm just saying we can't currently observe them directly.
But the even bigger problem is that your beliefs about your mental states partly determine your mental states, because they're all part of the same mind. It seems totally plausible that the belief "mental health is basically made up" would radically alter your mental experience of the physical aspects of depression vs. a world where you believe that mental health is a very important concept.
So I would summarize the problem with Richard's thesis not as "conservatives lie more," but "conservative beliefs actually cause people to have different mental experiences, and to talk about them differently in surveys, even if at some objective sensory level they are having the same bodily experience. So do beliefs about everything else."
So you would say conservatives report their beliefs inaccurately because they have some sort of mental blind spot as a result of purposely not thinking about their mental health? I guess when I say lie, maybe I don't mean their trying to trick people, It could be a self deluded mental state.
Also, it would be complicated, but there is likely ways to see if people with the same mental state report that state differently on a survey (correlating with political ideology). You would ask questions to find out how social they are, if they are part of any organized groups, etc. basically things we know cause good mental states. Then, if a democrat and a republican answer those questions the same, but their overall mental health "score" is way different, we then have evidence that there's some disconnect on their side from their mental experience to how it's reported.
No, I'm saying they may be reporting their mental states accurately, but their minds relate to their bodies in a different way, such that the terms "depression" or "poor mental health" mean something completely different to them than those terms mean to you. I doubt you or anyone else can come up with a rigorous definition of those terms that doesn't ultimately have to assume the accuracy of patient self-report.
How do we know that being part of organized groups, being social, etc. cause good mental states? Since we can't observe people's subjective consciousness, we can only know this because they are correlated in a group, or many groups, of survey responses from patients and research subjects -- and because it fits our own subjective experience. If you then encounter a large group or set of groups of people whose survey responses do NOT demonstrate this correlation, and claim that it does NOT fit their subjective experience, this is just as much evidence against the universality of the correlation as it is evidence that that second group is lying.
Put another way: "depressed but doesn't know it" is only a meaningful concept in hindsight. In the moment, a person cannot be said to be depressed if they deny experiencing anything that could be called depression.
"this is just as much evidence against the universality of the correlation as it is evidence that that second group is lying."
We can say with high certainty the things I listed (eg. being social) have strong causal power for positive mental health because it has been reported on mass without any clear incentive for people to lie about it.
Would you agree that there is some incentive for conservatives to lie about their mental health being better than it is, due to the politicization of mental health and therapy culture?
The victim mentality is one of the foundations of progressive politics. When one thinks that we live under a fascist dictatorship, that the planet is doomed, that racism underlies every single interpersonal relationships, I don't think it's irrational to think that people with such views are, on average, the worst off in terms of mental health.
A source that supports my intuition: https://sites.tufts.edu/cooperativeelectionstudy/2024/04/09/do-conservatives-really-have-better-mental-health-perhaps-not/
Why does everyone just accept the frame that "happiness" is the goal of life?
I want to achieve real things. Career success, physical health, better friendships and romantic relationships, better at hobbies...
You may call it vanity but its quite the opposite. You are helping people around you. Going to a psychologist or meditating in a room is inward and selfish. And it doesn't even work. I think most people would be much happier and more helpful to those around them if they just tried to accomplish real things.
I broadly agree but I think it's easy to overdo it too. I think "helping the people around you" and "career success" are worthy goals, but people should be limited in their willingness to sacrifice their own happiness for those goals (the optimal level of sacrifice isn't zero but it's also not infinite).
I think your own happiness is real, and roughly as important as, eg, your physical health or your friendships, and more so than say hobbies.
I’m sure you are a really successful person worthy of emulation and not a self-righteous hypocritical scold in real life.
I’m successful for my standards, Joseph. That’s all that matters🌈
But you’re still a hypocritical loser.
Would be interesting to look cross-culturally or cross-temporally too. My sense is that the association of left wing political beliefs with therapy culture is relatively spatiotemporally localized. Is it just the contemporary anglosphere? Were French leftists in the 80s believers in therapy culture? I'm not sure, but your theory predicts that if we go to times/places where the association doesn't exist, then left wing political beliefs should be less strongly correlated with poor mental health. Strikes me as plausible, though I don't know if good data exists to test.
There is a certain difference between self-awareness and neurotic self-consciousness just as there is a difference between positivity and "ignorance is bliss."
I agree with RH's take here - I agreed with it before I saw the survey data. But I think there can sometimes be multiple effects in play, and one of them I theorize is that conservatives essentially lie or embellish the degree to which they are happy/content in life - at least in a relative sense to liberals.
Growing up Southern Baptist, there was a strong push by leaders in the chuch for members to claim that because we knew Jesus, we were happy all the time. In fact, there is literally a children's worship song I recall where the lyrics said that because I found Jesus I was hap-hap-happy all the time!
But I think that this is actually a bigger more society-wide thing that affects more than just one denomination. Conservative religious people are under enormous pressure both internally and externally to claim that they made the right choice, believed in the right version of God, live in the right kind of family, had the right number of children, etc.
Essentially, the social incentive framework for conservatives is inverse to that of liberals. While Liberals are incentivized to celebrate their own fragility, their mental health problems, depression, victimization, doomerism, etc. Conservatives, particularly religious ones, are incentivized to do the opposite, even if they don't really feel it - to be tough, independent, resilent, absolute certainty, etc.
So that is why I don't think we can 100% trust conservatives when they say they are happy and doing great. Because there is significant shame for them in not being happy and doing great. Just like admitting that sometimes you don't feel like God is there means that you are an evil sinful backslider that has lost his salvation.
You're not wrong about the incentives. But there's also a feedback loop where focusing on positive feelings tends to make you feel better and focusing on negative makes you feel worse. It's very tricky to separate cause from effect here.
I emphasize "tends," because of course there are cases where it goes the other way -- e.g., when there is some concrete reason to feel unhappy and you're trying to suppress that feeling rather than work through it or address the cause. But as a default state, looking for things to feel positive about is going to result in better outcomes than looking for things to feel negative about.
Totally agree, and this is why at the end of the day I prefer to be more like a conservative personality-wise, even though I'm kind of liberal.
I am 23 so I can offer a Gen Z perspective here. When I was entering high school there was a massive wave of therapy culture. Many people my age listened to 'emo rappers' who sang about how depressed and sad they were (Juice Wrld, XXXtentacion, little peep). Many teenagers look for something to identify with to make them unique. Being a tragically misunderstood, depressed teenager was one of those things. Many people my age almost seemed to want their life to be worse so they can more convincingly be a mysterious, depressed loner.
At the same time there was a subculture about using your "mental illness" as kind of a personality trait. Many girls in high school would use words from clinical therapy and associate their traits/ actions as being a result of ocd/depression/adhd/their trauma etc. Many also seemed to believe that everyone has some type of mental health problem and by openly acknowledging yours you are being smart and helping the problem by 'talking about it and ending the stigma'.
Similarly, while bullying is rarer in my generation than previous ones many people would instead make fun of themselves. Joking about how depressed, sad, or even suicidal they were. In music class I had a friend who would always show me memes from this subreddit, r/2meirl4meirl, that was just endless, ironic memes about being depressed and suicidal. Even at the time my 14-year-old self could see how counter productive this was and how it created a self-fulfilling prophecy.
That's not to say everyone was depressed. I played various sports in high school and no one who played sports seemed to have this therapy culture problem. As well peers who were more popular seemed much less likely to identify with this culture.
I think the problem still exists, but has gotten better since I was in high school. Entering the workforce and working primarily with middle-aged men has also really revealed how unique this therapy culture problem is for Gen Z/millenials.
Therapy culture has a massive negativity bias and encourages people to think about all the bad things in their life more than they would naturally (e.g. trauma). If this doesn't make people genuinely feel worse, it at least makes them report worse moods.
In RH's survey, very conservative people were +0.5 mental health & very liberal were -0.25, it seems obvious that this doesn't reflect reality. Assuming there was actually a gap this clear & the defining difference was political identity, I think the difference would be common knowledge based off interactions with people who support either party. Mental health does get reflected through behaviour especially on the extremes, and a difference of 0.75 points in a 2 point range would be easy to pick up on, it would likely be something everyone would report experiencing if asked to ponder interactions with very liberal/conservative people. Remember, the further you move towards "very" any political group, the more likely it is that the individual who is very (insert group) is out spoken about their beliefs, therefore it would be easier for people to pick up on extreme differences in mental health when pondering interactions with such individuals. Of course, I see no evidence people are picking up on such a phenomenon, and I see evidence against it, which makes me skeptical that the difference is real. The first thing that came to mind from my anecdotes (I know their worthless) is that very conservative individuals won't admit obviously felt negative emotions. Someone who says depression isn't real, and "this generation is too soft" (ie. someone who's world view includes a stark opposition to therapy culture) would likely prefer to lie about their mental state than admit the have depression.
Side note/addition: Since therapy culture has somehow become politicized, it becomes exceedingly more likely that people don't think rationally about it
Every one of these terrible studies fail to acknowledge the possibility that the participants will outright lie about their wellbeing in order to avoid losing face.
why would they be afraid to lose face in front of anonymous polsters ?
For example, if they are religious they may believe that God observes them all the time. Then there is no such thing as answering something anonymously.
Nobody likes to even say those things out loud, even to themselves. These people are loathe to admit any kind of weakness, which is covered up with machismo and to a lesser extent religion.
that's an accusation by intent based on nothing
Actually there is strong evidence for it, take this study for example https://sites.tufts.edu/cooperativeelectionstudy/2024/04/09/do-conservatives-really-have-better-mental-health-perhaps-not/
does this change your opinion?
as someone who wanted to become an academiacel, I'm seething in jealousy at the ability to essentially DIY a study on just Twitter followers. Sure, there are tons of limits that you've outlined, but it's honestly still methodologically better than most social psych research, plus it's actually interesting.
Depending on timing of the research, there's a simpler reason why left-leaning people, particularly Americans, might average more stressed, worried, anxious, depressed etc. than right-leaning Americans.
The current government is doing things that are either wonderful, overdue, and values- affirming or perverted, evil, dangerous and regressive, depending on where you stand on the political spectrum. It's no surprise that those who feel vindicated rather than threatened are feeling a lot better right now.
I'd certainly feel better if I believed cities were violent hell holes, with ICE agents bravely removing only the worst of the troublemakers, at some risk to their own lives. I'd feel better if I looked forward happily to an uptick in enforcement of "Christian values", aka my own values. Etc. etc. somewhat as nauseam.
I made this point in a comment above, but I think there's an element here that the left LEANS INTO depression over politics. In some cases even ENCOURAGING people to be depressed over politics. "How can you be happy at a time like this?" Cf. some of the reactions over Taylor Swift's engagement.
Also comments about "not wanting to bring a child into a world like this, etc." I have heard this multiple times from leftists IRL, and I've heard it cited since the Reagan Administration. Or the old classic: threatening to leave the country if a Republican wins the election. That one might date back to GWB, but maybe it was said under Reagan as well.
While some take it to greater extremes than others, a lot of things like this are just normalized on the left, and have been for a very long time, and not just by online weirdos. Yet this attitude would be very weird on the right, to the point I've never heard it spoken aloud by a rightist.
The closest I can think of is online far rightists complaining about normie conservatives' obsession over "sportsball" on the Internet. But again, I'm surrounded by those sports-crazy normie conservatives, this is the sea I swim in, the "sportsball" talk is very niche, very easy to ignore.
Some of this is probably the effect of the religious gulf between right and left. Though there also seems to be a difference in how the left treats politics as a substitute religion, and how the right does.
Your theory would predict, then, that leftists are more depressed when rightists are in power, and vice versa. I strongly suspect, and I think the evidence from Haidt and others would suggest that these mood-ideology correlations are much more stable than this.
Or like regards like you fail to acknowledge, that people lie compulsively and conservatives are psychologically motivated by shame avoidance and can’t admit to these things even anonymously. Haidt is a hack.
I think your view is logically defensible, and I'm fairly sympathetic to it! But if you don't accept people's reports about their internal experiences, then you need to bite the bullet and throw out a pretty large chunk of the social sciences.
The replication crisis was partly because they used data like this, but the Heterodox Academy grifters are using the same shoddy social science practices to make people on the center-left look bad.
I had that thought for sure, but the data shows the difference existed even before authoritarianism was as normalized. I think someone who aggressively opposes trump could be in a bad mood when looking at the news, but I think it would mostly stop at mood, and not bleed into overall mental health. Like I don't think anyone is clinically depressed because of Trump.
Yeah. It's possible that if I'd read the OP more attentively, I'd have found study dates that blatantly falsified my hypothesis.
Mostly where I'm coming from is the observation that most of the people I know are unhappy and/or scared and/or angry, currently, and showing signs of unusual (for them) stress, similar to what I saw as a mailing list moderator after 9/11.
The people I know mostly range from middle of the road through lala-land left wing, and the few right wingers of my acquaintance have mostly dropped out of communication since covid. So I'm mostly guessing as to what right wing people are feeling currently, or how they may be acting - I use blogs, including this one, to get a tiny window into right wing opinion and experience. But I'd have to be blind not to see signs of unusual stress from most of the people I know, even those not pre-occupied with escape, resistance, or bemoaning the current situation.
I also see them in myself; I've got precious little accomplished in the days immediately after any significant escalation.
Fair enough. I think there's something to what you say, and I agree that many left-leaning people express a lot of distress related to the state of civil society. However, I wonder if mood and long-term outlook aren't often upstream of external events. It's the flipside of hedonic adaptation. My experience and a fair amount of psychological research evidence shows that people with negative valence will usually find a way to be unhappy about the world and their lives, whether things are going objectively better than at some prior period, or not.
I appreciate that Hanania somewhat separates therapy itself from therapy culture, as the former existed for a long time before the explosion of the latter. Can we imagine a version of therapy that is less fundamentally left-wing or liberal? It seems to me that part of the problem is that the field of therapy has become captured by an ideology which is not necessarily essential to it. I've heard anecdotes from more conservative people who consider or even try therapy but find the environment unwelcoming or discouraging of real honesty. The same goes for those studying to become therapists. There have been and still are conservative therapists and clients; I would be curious to see what their perspectives would reveal.
Freya India has made some insightful commentary on the degree to which therapy culture and therapists often pathologize conservatism itself. Many clients are encouraged to always prioritize their own needs, set "boundaries" which amount to willfully estranging themselves from friends and family, and taught that there are real solutions and fulfillment waiting for them if they can just journey deeper into themselves, and take some pills while they're at it. If a devout Christian housewife and mother of five went to a therapist in the nearest big city, she would likely be encouraged to question the fact that she considers her duty to her husband, children, family, and God more important than fulfilling than any of her own interests or needs. If she decided that is her genuine desire, or even refused to frame her lifestyle in those terms, would that be accepted? Or would her therapist secretly think of her as a pathetic victim?
Therapy is inherently individualistic to a degree, but I imagine we can cultivate a version of it which more effectively teaches people to turn toward their family and community, take responsibility for their choices, seek purpose beyond simple "happiness," etc. without denying the existence of certain mental health challenges and treatments outright.
If you looked at the pretty shocking APA clinical guidelines for the treatment of boys and men you would run a hundred miles. Especially given the contrast with the same document for girls and women which is a victimology fest.
Other possible factor "X" could be "life is hard, deal with it" vs. "it is society's fault"; people with the first outlook would be more prone to accept frustration and suffering as an inevitability, and don't think much about that (then, less depression, etc.; if your problems are unsolvable, they are nor really problems but some fixed constant of the universe), and also be more conservative; people with the second outlook are more prone to be progressive, and also to complain about the "unfairness" of life (instead of accepting it as natural like the rain or the gravity), then moe sadness, depression, etc.
Therapy culture, from my vantage point, seems like a necessary answer to "what is the soul"? Not that it is a correct answer, but that people need an answer to the question.
Now if you're a secular materialist, you can say "there is no soul," and that's your answer. But for most people, that's not satisfying. Religious people have an answer. Liberals struggle with this.
Of course, therapy culture is not mutually exclusive with Christianity, for example. One can engage in both simultaneously. But it does seem that the investigation into "what is the soul" is an inherently painful one. Either because suffering leads us to that question, or because the question itself reveals suffering we did not know was there.
At some point, there is a Zen-like acceptance possible that to look inward toward the soul is a narcissistic nothingness. It is a series of questions without answers, because it is not a true substance, but an illusion. There are multiple ways of achieving this conclusion, either through a theistic or non-theistic vantage point, but this seems to be the conclusion that the ancients came to.