Politics, gender, and mental health

[marshwiggle]

I don't think this has come up yet; if it has, my apologies.

Analysis of data from a Pew research study last year yielded some interesting results:

Two interesting findings thus far from my analysis of Pew's March 2020 COVID-19 survey. First, white (and especially 'very') liberals are far more likely than all other ideological-racial subgroups to report being diagnosed with a mental health condition.

and later:

Some of you asked for it, so here is the last chart broken down by gender. Biggest gap within age x ideological groups is between white liberal men (33.6%) and women (56.3%) in the 18-29 category

Fascinating stuff.

And just to avoid piling on the author, here's an important clarification:

I didn't write this thread to mock white liberals or their apparently disproportionate rates of mental illness (and you shouldn't either). Rather, this is a question that's underexplored and which may shed light on attitudinal differences towards various social policies.

[Hegemony]

But surely willingness to identify and acknowledge "mental illness" is highly influential here. And if the findings report "diagnosed with a mental illness," this also reflects rates of seeking professional help, which is heavily gender-skewed. Men are famously resistant to acknowledging that anything might be wrong, and women are famously introspective about their emotional states.

If 33.6% of men and 65.3% of women in a certain category say they have been diagnosed with a mental condition, that doesn't mean we can say that more women than men have a mental condition. For one thing, "In the western world, males die by suicide three to four times more often than do females."* So it depends on where you take your snapshot from.

There's also this study, that found: "Residents of states with the highest rates of gun ownership and political conservatism are at greater risk of suicide than those in states with less gun ownership and less politically conservative leanings, according to a study by University of California, Riverside sociology professor Augustine J. Kposowa."**

Of course, you could argue that suicide is not all a result of mental illness, and that people who commit suicide are not always in the category of people with mental illness diagnoses. (And that would actually follow logically, if more men commit suicide, which they do, and fewer men go to mental health professionals, which is also true.)

So, in short, this is a complex topic, and not one that should be reduced to simple cause-and-effect conclusions.

*(Värnik, P (March 2012). "Suicide in the world". International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 9 (3): 760–71. doi:10.3390/ijerph9030760. PMC 3367275. PMID 22690161.)

**"Association of suicide rates, gun ownership, conservatism and individual suicide risk," published online in the journal Social Psychiatry & Psychiatric Epidemiology, February 2013.

[marshwiggle]

But surely willingness to identify and acknowledge "mental illness" is highly influential here. And if the findings report "diagnosed with a mental illness," this also reflects rates of seeking professional help, which is heavily gender-skewed. Men are famously resistant to acknowledging that anything might be wrong, and women are famously introspective about their emotional states.

If 33.6% of men and 65.3% of women in a certain category say they have been diagnosed with a mental condition, that doesn't mean we can say that more women than men have a mental condition. For one thing, "In the western world, males die by suicide three to four times more often than do females."* So it depends on where you take your snapshot from.

There's also this study, that found: "Residents of states with the highest rates of gun ownership and political conservatism are at greater risk of suicide than those in states with less gun ownership and less politically conservative leanings, according to a study by University of California, Riverside sociology professor Augustine J. Kposowa."**

Of course, you could argue that suicide is not all a result of mental illness, and that people who commit suicide are not always in the category of people with mental illness diagnoses. (And that would actually follow logically, if more men commit suicide, which they do, and fewer men go to mental health professionals, which is also true.)

So, in short, this is a complex topic, and not one that should be reduced to simple cause-and-effect conclusions.

*(Värnik, P (March 2012). "Suicide in the world". International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 9 (3): 760–71. doi:10.3390/ijerph9030760. PMC 3367275. PMID 22690161.)

**"Association of suicide rates, gun ownership, conservatism and individual suicide risk," published online in the journal Social Psychiatry & Psychiatric Epidemiology, February 2013.

Yes, the suicide vs. getting counselling was pointed out in "The Boy Crisis" which I recently read.

One of the other graphs farther down in that article broke down liberals by Big 5 personality versus whether or not they had been told they had a mental illness. So, within the liberal population, those who had been identified with mental health issues were

• Higher in Neroticism (not a surprise)
• Higher in Agreeableness
• Lower in Extraversion
• Higher in Openness
• Lower in Conscientiousness

The last two together seem logical to me. A person high in openness to experience might be more willing to experiment with drugs, for instance, but being low in conscientiousness would probably engage in more risk while doing so. This would apply to more than drugs, but it makes sense that people who try lots of things without thinking too much about limits would be prone to bad outcomes, which could cause trauma.

[mahagonny]

There's also this study, that found: "Residents of states with the highest rates of gun ownership and political conservatism are at greater risk of suicide than those in states with less gun ownership and less politically conservative leanings, according to a study by University of California, Riverside sociology professor Augustine J. Kposowa."**

Of course, you could argue that suicide is not all a result of mental illness, and that people who commit suicide are not always in the category of people with mental illness diagnoses. (And that would actually follow logically, if more men commit suicide, which they do, and fewer men go to mental health professionals, which is also true.)

I'm not trying to be morbid here, but logically: Many people attempt suicide but don't succeed. Having guns available makes it easier to accomplish.