The Sad Citizen: How Politics Is Depressing and Why It Matters

The performance of Biden, the maneuvering of McConnell, and the electoral loss of Republicans capture a certain truth about the political world: politics makes many people depressed, and depression is demobilizing. In fact, major depressive disorder is just one of several “mood disorders” in the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual. In fact, roughly 50 percent of respondents in the personal life condition selected the “other” category compared to only about 10 percent from the politics condition. As a result, there are many fewer respondents to analyze using these questions than the psychological distress question, which appears on the core questionnaire.