People who enjoy good mental health tend to gravitate toward the Republican party, or vice versa. That's the finding, anyway, of a recent Gallup poll:
Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats or independents to rate their mental health as excellent, according to data from the last four November Gallup Health and Healthcare polls. Fifty-eight percent of Republicans report having excellent mental health, compared to 43% of independents and 38% of Democrats. This relationship between party identification and reports of excellent mental health persists even within categories of income, age, gender, church attendance, and education.
The differences are quite significant.... While Democrats are slightly less likely to report excellent mental health than are independents, the big distinctions in these data are the differences between Republicans and everyone else.
Correlation is no proof of causation, of course. The reason the relationship exists between being a Republican and more positive mental health is unknown, and one cannot say whether something about being a Republican causes a person to be more mentally healthy, or whether something about being mentally healthy causes a person to choose to become a Republican (or whether some third variable is responsible for causing both to be parallel).
But the key finding of the analyses presented here is that being a Republican appears to have an independent relationship on positive mental health above and beyond what can be explained by [other] demographic and lifestyle variables [such as income level]. The exact explanation for this persistent relationship -- as noted -- is unclear.
So, liberals, evidently, are more likely than conservatives and moderates to consider themselves mentally ill. Interesting. Anyone have any suggestions as to why they feel this way?
There's a lot more information about the poll at the link.
RLC
