As leftist victimhood ideology has become dominant in academia, the media, and on social networks, liberal women are suffering mental illness at higher levels than conservative women and all men.
Social psychologist and New York University business professor Jonathan Haidt wrote a newsletter post titled “Why the mental health of liberal girls sank first and foremost,” in which he attributes a few factors for the discrepancy.
Haidt presented graphs that indicate the trend of heightened mental issues among left-leaning individuals, which have spiked since 2013.
Haidt speculates there are three “great untruths” that have led to the discrepancy of mental illness between liberals and conservatives. First, he stated that Liberal women “came to believe that they were fragile and would be harmed by books, speakers, and words, which they learned were forms of violence.”
Secondly, Haidt wrote that since around 2013, emotions and anxieties became acceptable guides for truth over reality.
“Liberals embraced these beliefs more than conservatives. Young liberal women adopted them more than any other group due to their heavier use of social media and their participation in online communities that developed new disempowering ideas,” Haidt said.
Third, the postmodern worldview adopted by academics and so-called anti-racists has come “to see society as comprised of victims and oppressors—good people and bad people.”
Last year, Professor Haidt resigned from his professional association, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, over a requirement that research submitted to their conferences must advance “equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals.”
Haidt said that universities had compromised their commitment to truth by adopting a telos of “anti-racism” in 2015 and that the far-left agenda of “anti-racism” and “equity, diversity, and inclusion” has infected academia.
