Prof. Lauren Van De Hey of Utah State University set out to study the relationship between mental illness and political identity. What she found is that roughly half of study participants with mental illness said their condition is "very important or somewhat important" to who they are as a person.
They're not just sick. They've made it a personality trait.
The study, published in the journal Political Behavior, found what Van De Hey described as "an emerging mental health political identity that is most pronounced among younger (Gen Z) and more liberal Americans." In plain English: liberal Americans are more likely to have a mental illness, and they're more likely to wear it like a badge. The research builds on earlier work from the Universities of Florida and Toronto in 2023 that documented the same pattern, and Columbia University Magazine reported on the broader trend that same year.
The numbers from separate research tracked by the Institute for Family Studies fill in the picture. Among women, 37% of conservatives reported being completely satisfied with life. For moderates, that number drops to 28%. For liberals, it craters to 12%. Young liberal women report feeling lonely on a weekly basis at a rate of 29%, compared to just 11% for their conservative counterparts. Conservative young women are three times more likely to report feeling very happy.
The obvious question is why. Van De Hey's research points to a difference in how the two sides even define mental health. Conservatives are less likely to categorize anxiety and depression as mental health conditions and seek clinical treatment at lower rates — something Van De Hey attributes to what she calls a "personal responsibility ethos." Whether that means conservatives are tougher, more private, or just less inclined to build an identity around a diagnosis is a question the study leaves open.
But here's what the data doesn't leave open: conservative women are nearly five times more likely to attend weekly church services than liberal women. That's not a footnote. That's a variable that tracks almost perfectly with every happiness and satisfaction metric in the study. Community, purpose, structure, faith — the things progressive culture has spent two decades mocking as outdated turn out to correlate with not being miserable.
Glenn T. Stanton of the Daily Citizen, as reported by Conservative Review, put a finer point on it: "It is becoming increasingly clear which ideas do what! Conservative, and specifically Christian, ideas have a much better track record than their leftist counterparts."
The progressive response to data like this is predictable. They'll say conservatives underreport. They'll say the stigma around mental health in conservative communities suppresses the numbers. They'll say the study design is flawed. What they won't do is reckon with the possibility that an ideology built on grievance, victimhood hierarchies, and the systematic dismantling of every institution that ever gave people meaning might — just might — make people unhappy.
Twelve percent life satisfaction. Twenty-nine percent weekly loneliness. Three-to-one happiness gap. Five-to-one church attendance gap.
At some point, the pattern stops being a coincidence and starts being a diagnosis.