For this extra credit blog, I chose to listen to the Democracy Works podcast titled “Why Politics Makes Us Depressed — And What We Can Do About It”. This stood out to me because of the interesting title, but also because depression and mental health have become such an issue globally in recent years. Many people are open about their struggling, and politics has played a role.
The guest brought in for this podcast was Christopher Ojeda, who received his PhD from Penn State and is a political science professor at UC-Merced. I enjoyed Ojeda’s discussion of the relationship between politics and psychology and how different things can impact our mental state.
Before Ojeda is even introduced, the hosts mentioned a scary statistic: “Gen Z is about twice as likely as Americans over 25 to battled depression, and the number is 42%”. Though there are a variety of reasons for this, politics certainly are not helping. Students are taking a more active role in politics, and with that comes a much larger personal stake and larger effects when their preferred choices/laws do not succeed. Though politics is just one piece of the puzzle, it is sad to see how common depression has become among our generation.
One of my favorite points Ojeda brought up in the podcast was how increased media coverage and access has contributed to the depression surrounding politics. He mentions that very few people directly take part in political events (inaugurations, for example), but the media makes everything available to us to watch. While good for transparency, this can really hurt if someone gets sucked in to watching constant news coverage. Ojeda mentions that the news stories can cause complex emotions, and when we watch them over and over (or different stories with similar evoked emotions) it can cause depression. Media networks are looking for as many views/listens/reads as possible, and citizens taking in too much of this information (with their preferred party bias) can be deeply harmed.
Ojeda also brings up an interesting point related to mental health professionals. He discusses how they are generally trained to be neutral in discussions. This generally makes sense; doctors/therapists shouldn’t be bringing up their own non-medical opinions during a session. But Ojeda says that he has talked to many of these professionals recently and they are seeing more and more people struggling due to politics. This makes neutrality more difficult, because patients are raising the issue and the professionals aren’t supposed to weigh in. He mentions that there isn’t any true rule for political discussion in the mental health area, so professionals are struggling with how to approach the issue.
One of the smaller points Ojeda makes is how politics have turned into a team sport. There is an “us vs. them” mentality that has overtaken any idea of cooperation and agreeing to disagree. In my own opinion, this is the biggest driver of division in the country. If that issue can be resolved (which seems unlikely anytime in the near future), hopefully some of the mental health issues can slowly resolve as individuals realize they aren’t so different from each other.
https://www.democracyworkspodcast.com/why-politics-makes-us-depressed-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/