Mental Health in Politics
Mental health and wellbeing have become much more widely discussed in popular and journalistic discourse over recent years. They have also become the topic of a broader corpus of academic research in varying fields of study. And yet whilst we commonly discuss mental health and wellbeing in terms of specific symptoms or through known associations with independent variables like education, occupation, and family life, there is very little discussion about the links between mental ill-health and politics. This is in spite of the fact that politics affects everyone, everywhere and has, in turn, become more volatile and stressful to observe. At the same time, political office as a place of work is characterised by intense pressures and stresses. Texts listed on this reading list cover the relationship between mental health and politics at both an elite and mass level.
Category 1: The mental health of politicians.
Davidson, J.R.T., Connor, K.M., and Swartz, M. (2006). Mental Illness in U.S. Presidents Between 1776 and 1974: A Review of Biographical Sources. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Vol. 194(1): 47-51.
Owen, D., and Davidson, J. (2009). Hubris syndrome: an acquired personality disorder? A study of US presidents and UK prime ministers over the last 100 years. Brain, Vol. 132(5): 1396–1406.
Weinberg, A. (2015). A Longitudinal Study of the Impact of Changes in the Job and the Expenses Scandal on UK National Politicians’ Experiences of Work, Stress and the Home-work Interface, Parliamentary Affairs, Vol. 68: 248–271.
Flinders, M., Weinberg, A., Weinberg, J., Geddes, M., and Kwiatkowski, R. (2018). Governing Under Pressure? The Mental Wellbeing of Politicians. Parliamentary Affairs, Vol. 73(2): 253–273.
Loewen, P., and Rheault, L. (2019). Voters Punish Politicians with Depression. British Journal of Political Science, 1-10. doi:10.1017/S0007123419000127.
Weinberg, J. (2020). Emotional Labour and Occupational Wellbeing in Political Office. British Journal of Politics and International Relations.
Category 2: The mental health of voters.
Liberini, F., Redoano, M., and Proto, E. (2015). Happy voters. Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 146: 41-57.
Pacheco, J., and Fletcher, J. (2015). Incorporating Health into Studies of Political Behaviour: Evidence for Turnout and Partisanship. Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 68(1): 104–116.
Burden, B.C., Fletcher, J.M, Herd, P., Jones, B.M., and Moynihan, D.P. (2017). How Different Forms of Health Matter to Political Participation. The Journal of Politics, Vol. 79(1): 166-178.
Couture, J., and Breux, S. (2017). The differentiated effects of health on political participation, European Journal of Public Health, Vol. 27(4): 599–604.
Williams, D.R., and Medlock, M.M. (2017). Health Effects of Dramatic Societal Events — Ramifications of the Recent Presidential Election. The New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 376: 2295-2299.
Ojeda, C., and Slaughter, C.M. (2019). Intersectionality, Depression, and Voter Turnout. Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law. Vol. 44(3): 479–504.
Smith, K.B., Hibbing, M.V., Hibbing, J.R. (2019). Friends, relatives, sanity, and health: The costs of politics. PLoS ONE 14(9): e0221870.
Bernadi, L. and Johns, R. (2020). Depression and attitudes to change in referendums: The case of Brexit. European Journal of Political Research. doi:10.1111/1475-6765.12398.