New pre-print! Political mental health is distinct from mental health and has unique political correlates

Political mental health is distinct from mental health and has unique political correlates: https://lnkd.in/emrdkr2K

By Delaney Peterson, Gijs Schumacher, Frederic Hopp and Bert Bakker

Is there a need for domain-specificity when studying mental health (MH) and politics? In our study in the Netherlands, we find political mental health (PMH) is distinct from MH & has unique political correlates, from polarization to ideological extremism.

The literature on MH and politics spans various disorders and political outcomes. Recently, there has been a turn to domain-specific concepts (i.e., political health, political anxiety). What would domain-specificity contribute to our understanding of politics beyond traditional MH measures?

To investigate this, we test and compare the construct and predictive validity of domain-specific PMH and MH in a study conducted in the Dutch population. Through our tests of construct validity, we find PMH is an independent construct to MH. Tests of predictive validity demonstrate while both PMH and MH have a range of political correlates, from political participation to external political efficacy, it is PMH that has stronger and broader negative political associations.

Additionally, our exploratory findings suggest that first, the influence of one form of mental health can be moderated by the level of the other, highlighting conditional relationships for some outcomes but independent effects for others. Second, PMH and MH demonstrate different patterns of association: PMH explains variance above and beyond MH when it comes to political attitudes and behaviors. MH explains variance above and beyond PMH when it comes to internal psychological states.

Our results imply domain-specificity is needed to properly identify the extent to which mental health is connected to engagement with politics and who may be the most affected and importantly, that PMH and MH have more far reaching political consequences than previously assumed.

Politics may be responsible for an emerging category of mental health problems, one that traditional MH measures neglect to capture. As such, domain-specific PMH is a way to name the toll politics is taking on individuals well-being.