In 2021, Scott McGreal, writing in Psychology Today, reported that an American study demonstrated a link between high levels of neuroticism and liberal politics. Additional findings from a British study later that same year indicated a similar link between left-wing political views on economics and the environment (among other issues) and the occurrence of generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and phobias. One interesting aspect of these findings is that they run counter to the hypothesis that persons expressing generally conservative political views hold their views due to “increased threat sensitivity.” Another is that the researchers presenting these findings had no axe to grind against political liberals or leftists. Quite the reverse, in fact, and they were startled by their own findings.

These findings are of a piece with those of a much larger longitudinal study of the mental health of American adolescents over the years 2005 to 2018. That study showed both a marked increase of “internalized symptoms” of poor mental health and a consistent disparity between the mental health of self-reported teenage “liberals,” who consistently evinced greater levels of these internalized symptoms, and “conservatives,” who consistently evinced lower levels, even as mental health deteriorated for the entire age cohort as an aggregate. The study broke the subjects down by socioeconomic group, sex, race, and their parents’ educational level. The findings generally indicated that these social factors, along with parental ideology, had significant though differing influences driving the increase in anxiety, depression, and loneliness among those with “internalized symptoms.”