Does anyone know of any research being done on mental illness and the republican party?

[pleah]

Just curious as to the percentage of mental illness and the thug party. :evilgrin:

[NYCGirl]

1. Probably about the same as the general population. NT

[depakid]

5. Unlikely

Especially when one figures Axis II disorders into the mix.

My suspicion is that the prevalence is considerably higher overall.

I can think of a lot of national Democrats who are jerks- but none who present as clearly as Michele Bachmann and Virginia Foxx. You can go right down the diagnostic criteria with either one of them.

[treestar]

6. But more likely to be untreated

Since they would be more likely to see it as some sort of moral weakness and wouldn't be able to admit when they had a problem.

[Hansel]

42. I doubt it.

Christian churches supporting Republicans have their parishioners recruiting people from among the vulnerable so that when they get into the church they can manipulate them into voting for Republicans because they are more Godly.

I think that the recruitment from among the ranks of drug and alcohol addicted, compulsive personalities,
the disenfranchised, domestically abused, and the mentally vulnerable almost assures that there are is higher percentage of mental illness in the Republican party. I know this from my experiences with these mega fundamentalist churches that the more easily manipulated the person, the more likely they are recruited to the church. Instead of getting the professional help they need, they are used by the church to grow their numbers, increase their coffers and to vote in the interest of Republicans. We were told God wanted us to vote against the Democrats who were demons and for the Godly Republicans. It was quite blatant.

I also believe that mentally ill people who lean more liberal are more likely to seek counseling just because they tend to not have the hang ups that conservatives do about getting help. There is also a tendency of mentally dependent people to need an authoritarian figure in their lives. They are more likely to find this with Republicans.

[niceypoo]

2. The GOP is redefining mental illness

They celebrate it

[jaksavage]

3. Yes we all study it

on TV every day and every night.
Except those of us who do not watch TV.

[RKP5637]

4. The thought has crossed my mind too... it appears the republican party is

embracing the lunatic fringe.

[anonymous171]

23. The GOP is the lunatic fringe. No amount of conservatism is good

Every conservative, no matter how liberal, is an enemy.

[RKP5637]

31. Listening/seeing what the republicans embrace these days it's certainly hard to

conclude otherwise.

[FarLeftFist]

7. Yes clinical trials are under way with Palin's book tour and Bachmann's tea parties

side effects include paranoia, hallucinations and the occasional use of bible quotes. Which I believe are the same effects from being bitten by a rabid FOX.

[ShockediSay]

8. Sociopathological IMHO n/t

[ClassWarrior]

9. Read "Conservatives Without Conscience" by John Dean. He draws a correlation...

...between the RW and the 25% of the population with extreme authoritarian tendencies.

NGU.

[EFerrari]

36. Well, look at what the cat drug in.

lol

:hi:

[ClassWarrior]

37. That's gotta be one strong cat...

LOL

:hi: you!

NGU.

[EFerrari]

41. Or a really smart one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=230cRNAXGlc

[Rabrrrrrr]

10. I think you are unfair and insensitive to reduce it down to "mental illness"

Many people have mental illnesses, and are not to be laughed about.

What the Republicans (esp. the freepers, teabaggers, and even religious fundamentalists in general) DO have is a specific kind of mental illness associated with very poor terror management skills.

They have an inability to handle ambiguity, difference of opinions, ideologies which are not black and white, fear of the future, fear of the other, fear of loss, authoritarianism, low self-esteem, and so on.

A great paper was done a couple years ago on this: Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~hannahk/bulletin.pdf

The abstract: Analyzing political conservatism as motivated social cognition integrates theories of personality (authoritarianism, dogmatism–intolerance of ambiguity), epistemic and existential needs (for closure, regulatory focus, terror management), and ideological rationalization (social dominance, system justification). A meta-analysis (88 samples, 12 countries, 22,818 cases) confirms that several psychological variables predict political conservatism: death anxiety (weighted mean r
.50); system instability (.47); dogmatism–intolerance of ambiguity (.34); openness to experience (–.32); uncertainty tolerance (–.27); needs for order, structure, and closure (.26); integrative complexity (–.20); fear of threat and loss (.18); and self-esteem (–.09). The core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and justification of inequality and is motivated by needs that vary situationally and dispositionally to manage uncertainty and threat.

You can also google on "terror management" for more info on that.

Fascinating stuff, and I think that this is a basic fundamental that divides liberals and conservatives, or at least the more nasty conservatives.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

30. self-delete

self-delete

[pleah]

54. Thank you very much.

[EFerrari]

11. We don't have enough threads stimatizing mental illness here.

[JohnnyLib2]

13. +1

[cliffordu]

14. +2

[leftstreet]

16. +3

[Dappleganger]

21. Thank you!

For calling this for what it is!

[pleah]

33. It wasn't meant as a denegration of mental illness, I was asking a serious question.

Very sorry you took umbridge to my post. The devil emoticon was aimed at the thug party in general.

[EFerrari]

35. Gotcha. You probably didn't mean it that way but

it comes off as a careless put down. Thanks for clarifying, pleah.

[HuckleB]

52. +1

[Bigmack]

12. The new DSM-V...

(Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)

places them in the CMFS group.

That is: "Crazy Mother Fucker Syndrome".

[avaistheone1]

15. Here's a study. Research published over the weekend shows that brains of liberals and conservatives

may be constructed and work differently.

In a study likely to raise the hackles of some conservatives, scientists at New York University and the University of California, Los Angeles, found that a specific region of the brain’s cortex is more sensitive in people who consider themselves liberals than in self-declared conservatives.

The brain region in question helps people shift gears when their usual response would be inappropriate, supporting the notion that liberals are more flexible in their thinking.

http://psychcentral.com/news/2007/09/10/brains-of-liberals-conservatives-may-work-differently/1691.html

[JohnnyLib2]

19. Those can be seen as differences among humans rather than negative or positive.

We left-handed folks are testy about such things.

[pleah]

46. Thank you!

:hi:

[pleah]

55. Thank you.

[Ghost in the Machine]

17. Psychologists say conservatism is a mental illness....

A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity".
As if that was not enough to get Republican blood boiling, the report's four authors linked Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing talkshow host, Rush Limbaugh, arguing they all suffered from the same affliction.

All of them "preached a return to an idealised past and condoned inequality".

Republicans are demanding to know why the psychologists behind the report, Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, received $1.2m in public funds for their research from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

The authors also peer into the psyche of President George Bush, who turns out to be a textbook case. The telltale signs are his preference for moral certainty and frequently expressed dislike of nuance.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/aug/13/usa.redbox

:hi:

Peace,

Ghost

[pleah]

45. Thanks!

:hi:

[Bjorn Against]

18. I have a brother with schizophrenia and he is a Democrat.

Mental illness knows no political ideology and quite frankly I find this thread offensive.

[notesdev]

26. Agreed

Politicizing science is poisonous to both politics and science, and trivializes actual mental illness.

Just because someone doesn't share one's own opinion doesn't mean they're crazy. I shouldn't even have to say that... I almost have to question whether it's some form of projection to even make the assertion.

[pleah]

47. I'm sorry you took offense. I was very serious about trying to find info about a

connection to this phenomenon about the type of people drawn to hate and violence of the base of the thug party. And, if it was some sort of brain malfunction or just a lack of education or what ever.

[pleah]

48. For the record people.

I have family that have had to be on meds for mental disorders.

[Bitwit1234]

20. YES

I think it was last year someone did do an investigation. This post reminds me, and I was going to google it to see it it was still there. One thing it did say was people who usually gravitate to the republican party are the type who are followers and can be easily lead. That they are like lemmings that would follow the leader over a cliff, knowing full well they were going over a cliff. I think I'll see if I can find it and post a link.

[anonymous171]

22. They are not mentally ill. They are just as rational as you or I.

Why can't people get over this? They are just people with stupid political views whose effect on elections must be minimized.

[grasswire]

24. I believe there was such a report several years ago.

It found a correlation between authoritarianism and Republicanism, I think. But I think the subset of Republicanism that could be called "wingnuttery" is not just authoritarian, but also delusional.

Perhaps there really ought to be a DSM definition of wingnuttery.

[cowcommander]

25. Religion

'nuff said

[grasswire]

27. from 2003 -- US government report

As reported in The Guardian:

A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity".

As if that was not enough to get Republican blood boiling, the report's four authors linked Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing talkshow host, Rush Limbaugh, arguing they all suffered from the same affliction.

All of them "preached a return to an idealised past and condoned inequality".

Republicans are demanding to know why the psychologists behind the report, Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, received $1.2m in public funds for their research from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

The authors also peer into the psyche of President George Bush, who turns out to be a textbook case. The telltale signs are his preference for moral certainty and frequently expressed dislike of nuance.

"This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes," the authors argue in the Psychological Bulletin.

more at link: http//www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/aug/13/usa.redbox

[pleah]

49. Thank you.

[Odin2005]

28. Oh, more stigmatizing of mental illness. We are all Repuke nuts, eh?

:puke:

[StarfarerBill]

29. Ignorance is not a mental illness.

But like mental illness, it can be treated.

[pleah]

32. Thank you everyone! You all brightened my day.

:) :toast: :grouphug: Enjoyed reading all the posts, very much!

[grasswire]

34. more

Psychologist and author M. Scott Peck (now deceased) in his book "People of the Lie" argued for a DSM set of diagnostic criteria for the phenomenon "evil" as it exists in humans. He thought it should be categorized as a mental illness, and should be quantifiable.

[pleah]

43. Very interesting. Thanks. n/t

[mainer]

38. There have been studies proving conservatives to be far more fearful

The researcher had college students look at cartoon drawings of human faces, and asked them to interpret the expressions. One face could have been interpreted in several ways. The subjects who said the face looked "scared or confused" were more likely to be politically liberal. The subjects who said the face looked "threatening or angry" were more likely to be politically conservative.

The conclusion is that conservative people are far more likely to perceive a situation or a person as being threatening.

And then there's this study which backs it up as a physiological response:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;321/5896/1667?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Oxley&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=date&resourcetype=HWCIT

[mainer]

39. Conservatives also less creative (Psychology Today Magazine)

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/200811/are-conservatives-less-creative-liberals-0

[pleah]

50. Thank you.

[old mark]

40. Don't know about the GOP per se, but a lot on the Really Really Right

don't "believe" in mental illness/health. There seem to ber a large number who have had brushes with the MH system or with the legal aspects of it anyway, and really fear having their guns taken away and having the "government" watching them. A lot of them hate any social workers or social service agencies as well - the kind who take your kids away for various legal reasons or make you leave your home after beating your wife or kids too many times. They fear the records kept of past offences, too, maybe in different states...

A lot of the very right wingers are extremely evil warped people with lots of anger and short tempers who love to drink alot. They are some of the reasons more Democrats should own guns.

mark

[Posteritatis]

44. Unrec for *another* fucking thread politicising mental illness. (nt)

[pleah]

51. My post didn't have anything to do with getting recs. n/t

[whistler162]

53. No but you should keep your appointments!