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PEW STUDY: WHITE LIBERALS DISPROPORTIONATELY SUFFER FROM MENTAL ILLNESS. Survey data from a 2020 Pew poll indicates that white liberals disproportionately suffer from mental illness versus their conservative counterparts. The study, which examined white liberals, moderates, and conservatives, both male and female, found that conservatives were far less likely to be diagnosed with mental health issues than those who identified as either liberal or even “very liberal.” Young white women suffered the worst. White women, ages 18-29, who identified as liberal were given a mental health diagnosis from medical professionals at a rate of 56.3%, as compared to 28.4% in moderates and 27.3% in conservatives. Zach Goldberg, a Ph.D. candidate in political science, consolidated the study’s info in a set of visuals and posted them to a thread on Twitter. Goldberg included the following disclaimer with his research: “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.” 1/n 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. pic.twitter.com/RynS9lk0jR — Zach Goldberg (@ZachG932) April 11, 2020 2/n Somewhat surprisingly, this difference further grows when we add standard controls pic.twitter.com/2VM3DD2HJI — Zach Goldberg (@ZachG932) April 11, 2020 3/n We next turn to mean responses to this battery, which asks about the frequency at which respondents experienced specific mental health issues over the previous 7 days pic.twitter.com/2zisVK5ItD — Zach Goldberg (@ZachG932) April 11, 2020 4/n The differences are more modest here, but still significant pic.twitter.com/eGeyPEpONU — Zach Goldberg (@ZachG932) April 11, 2020 5/n They are also robust to several potential confounds (e.g. job loss, pay-cuts, marital status) pic.twitter.com/1YE76bEbKc — Zach Goldberg (@ZachG932) April 11, 2020 6/n However, entering the 'mental health diagnosis' variable into the model does (perhaps naturally) narrow the difference. pic.twitter.com/E22JIYwgRi — Zach Goldberg (@ZachG932) April 11, 2020 11/n Overall, and with one exception (white moderates), those in 18-29 age group are more likely to report being diagnosed with a mental health condition. The differences among white liberals, though, are striking: almost half of white liberals in this cohort report a diagnosis. pic.twitter.com/eKFG1GZF8t — Zach Goldberg (@ZachG932) April 11, 2020 “It’s possible that the disparities in self-reported diagnosis are simply or partly a function of white liberals being more likely to seek mental health evaluations,” noted Goldberg. “I don’t have the data to answer this question.” Mock and Rob discuss the Pew study’s findings in the clip below. https://omny.fm/shows/mock-rob/study-shows-over-half-of-white-liberal-women-ages