5 Reasons Liberals Are More Mentally Ill Than Conservatives
It’s no secret that liberals are more likely to be mentally ill than conservatives. In fact, if you are a regular reader of Culturcidal, you’ve probably seen this disturbing graph before:
There is no definitive answer as to why there’s so much more mental illness among liberals, but we could certainly make some well-informed guesses about why that’s the case.
1) Mentally ill people are drawn toward liberalism: Which came first? The chicken or the egg? You could ask a similar question about mental illness and liberals. Are mentally ill people drawn toward liberalism or does liberalism tend to make people mentally ill? The most likely answer is, “yes,” to both questions.
Numerous studies have found that mentally ill people find liberalism more attractive than conservatism. It’s not hard to figure out why. Liberalism is more flexible, more victim-oriented and it tends to draw in people who want to upend the way the world works because they believe people like them lose out in the current system.
If you’re a man who wants to become a woman, think your schizophrenia is a superpower, or are simply so mentally dysfunctional that you can’t hold a job, it’s easy to see how liberalism would seem much more appealing to you than conservatism, where the tolerance level for that kind of bullsh*t is considerably smaller.
2) Lack of agency: Not only do liberals tend to have a victim-oriented mindset, but they often believe that your race is far more important than anything you can do as an individual. In other words, many liberals look at themselves as hapless sailors at the mercy of the waves of life as opposed to the captains of their own ships.
Yet, believing that if you don’t like the circumstances of your life, you can change it is a key component of mental health. If you think success is luck, failure isn’t your fault, and your own life is largely out of your control, it’s easy to see how that could make you upset, deeply anxious, and unwilling to make a real effort to fix what’s going wrong in your life or your head.
3) Ever-changing rules: Liberalism is like a mean girls’ club at school where you can go from hero to zero in no time flat if you don’t play by the constantly changing rules:
You’re not allowed to think for yourself because if you come to a conclusion that doesn’t match up with whatever the hot new trend is on the Left, you can go from liberal in good standing to, “Wow, I hate Nazis like you” in seconds flat among large numbers of people you previously thought were your friends and allies. See Elon Musk, J.K. Rowling, Joe Rogan, and RFK Jr. for great examples of this.
Mentally, this is not a healthy way to live because it essentially means you have to abandon your logic, your personal beliefs, and your ability to think freely to please a temperamental, easily outraged, liberal mob whose beliefs can rapidly shift. Faking it is no fun, so imagine what it would do to your mind to feel like you have to spend YOUR WHOLE LIFE faking it because the intolerant people you want to impress will never accept independent thinking.
4) Catastrophizing: As you’d expect from the people who invented the concept of “microaggressions” and “safe zones,” liberals have a tendency to wildly overreact to things most people would barely notice. They also tend to spend their lives terrified of imagined dooms that never happen. There are so many examples of this that I could easily publish 50 of them if I were so inclined…
Liberals have a reputation for not being emotionally stable as it is, so imagine what taking someone like that and constantly keeping them in a hysterical state via headlines like the ones you’re seeing here would do to their mindset.
Really, it’s no surprise so many liberals mentally break when they spend their days endlessly being spoon-fed imaginary apocalyptic scenarios that they always seem to buy into for some reason even if the last 40 in a row they were told about never happened.
5) They’re out of step with human nature: As a general rule, the better you understand reality as it is, the happier and more successful you’re going to be. On the other hand, the more out of sync with reality you are, the harder life is going to be for you.
If you believe your neighbors are evil because they disagree with you politically, that men and women aren’t physically different, criminals are actually nice people who are just victims of society and your ideas are obviously right even though you can’t defend them logically, you’re going to have a punishing life in a lot of different ways.
Additionally, if your poor mental models of reality make life extremely unpredictable to you, it’s very easy for your thinking to become disordered. If you walked up to your loving wife and she said she didn’t know who you were, people kept telling you 2 + 2 = 5 and the sky was suddenly green tomorrow, you would question your grasp on reality, too. Well, liberals have the equivalent of this happen to them politically all the time because the way they look at human beings is fundamentally flawed and most of the policies they support just don’t work.
I have experience with this in my own life. 30 years ago I had a mental breakdown. I was diagnosed with chronic depression and PTSD. My mother, who was an RN directed me to a psychiatrist she knew well. I am glad I followed her advice.
This psychiatrist was old school and believed strongly in teaching his patients how to overcome rather than be held hostage to your disease. I have always been very independent. I would tell my mom as a small child that I could do it myself. She encouraged that attitude of mine. I always learned how to do things I wanted to do.
I was diagnosed with asthma when I was 8. Mom, who had asthma since she was born, told me I could not let asthma define what I could do. I learned to manage it while fully participating in sports. I ran cross country and cycled doing century rides (100 miles in 6 to 8 hours). In the summers I backpacked and the winter I cross-country skied.
When I had my mental breakdown, my attitude was this sucks and I have to get better. It was a lot of hard work and took time. I am still growing and learning today. I could not work when it happened. I had been working since I was in 4th grade with my first paper route.
Within 5 years, I earned my teaching credential and have worked as a high school biology teacher since. I had to learn to cope with the stress that comes with public school teaching. I took it as a challenge to figure out how to thrive and not let the stress cause me to burn out. I did and my students and the administrators tell me I am one of the most calm, and patient teacher. Why? I learned that the opinions of others do not define me. When parents and students are critical of a decision I made, I know it is on them, not me. I have very high standards and refuse to lower them for any reason. I expect students to behave appropriately and I do not waiver on grades. I do not give a pity D- when the student earned an F. I do not raise grades no matter the pressure placed on me.
I have worked with many teachers who are very liberal and suffer from mental health conditions. Their mental health has declined over the years because they believe it is due to factors they cannot control. They make poor decisions that make their issues worse.
When in an IEP meeting and I am told I need to lower my standards because the student cannot learn due to their disability, I let them know I know what their student is dealing with. I have moderate dyslexia. When I went to school, there was no special education and accommodations to make the academic work easier for me. My mom placed me in a study in the local University that was researching dyslexia. They taught me how to deal with it. I learned to use a ruler as an aid to not get lost when reading. I learned to double check all the math problems I did to catch times I inverted numbers. Math was difficult but I excelled at it because I put in the extra work. I did that because I was fascinated by science and needed to learn math skills to excel in science. My best subjects in school, including college was math and science. I went on to earn a Ph.D in Biology.
I make it clear, I will help the student learn and show them how, I will not lower the standards. I have helped many special education students achieve much more than they ever thought they could. I am so good at it that I am assigned more special education students than most teachers. I have such a reputation that many parents of special education students want their child assigned to me.
Even today, with medication, I still have depression. Most who know me would be surprised. I force myself to get out of bed every morning no matter how bad I feel. I will not miss work due to depression. I have a job to do. When I get in the classroom, I forget that I am depressed because I do my job to the best of my ability. I have high standards for myself. On weekends, I get out of bed at the same time and keep busy all day. Physical activity is a great cure for depression.
My psychiatrist taught me that I am in control of my life and my mental well being is mine to determine. I am in control of my life and it is my responsibility to make good decisions and I will suffer the consequences of poor decisions. I learn from my mistakes and strive to continue improving as a person.
Good list, good explanation. I might add, somewhere in the list, the inevitable depression that results from engaging in magical thinking. Sort of like #5, when you abandon logic and rational planning to deal with the hard parts of getting a job done, and resort to; "well let's just try it. Everybody wants this to work so we'll get it done somehow." But it's not true- for example, you can't spend your way out of debt, no matter how many times you've responded that "it's not an expense, it's an investment!" If the budget doesn't balance, printing more money or opening up a new credit card is not a winning plan, and this fact drives the Left crazy. Look at their hysterical response to DOGE...