According to the data from @slatestarcodex's survey, the more left-wing you are, the more likely you are to have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness. This is also what I would have guessed based on anecdotal evidence. slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/20/ssc… 
@slatestarcodex In response to @GabrielRossman's suggestion, here is the same thing but excluding depression, thus keeping only the most serious conditions. The pattern is the same, but the confidence intervals are much wider, since those conditions are much rarer.
@slatestarcodex @GabrielRossman By the way, while doing that, I realized that I had mistakenly included anxiety disorder in the first chart, so the title was inaccurate. Here is a correct version that includes depression but not anxiety disorder.
@slatestarcodex @GabrielRossman And in case you're wondering, if you just look at depression, here is what it looks like. Again, the pattern is the same, so it doesn't seem to be specific to any mental health issue in particular, although the survey asks about a few others I haven't checked yet.
@slatestarcodex @GabrielRossman Yes, you could already see that when depression was included, but since the survey had relatively few far-right respondents the confidence intervals are very wide for them and it's hard to tell for sure, even though it's definitely plausible in my opinion.
@slatestarcodex @GabrielRossman For your information, here is something that shows essentially the same thing using data from the GSS, which unlike SSC's survey is based on a random sample.
@slatestarcodex @GabrielRossman If you think there is not really any relationship between political views and mental illness once you control for every relevant variable, you should ask yourself what it would take for this to be true given the data, because we're not talking about small effects here...
@slatestarcodex @GabrielRossman For instance, do you *really* think that Marxists are about twice as likely as liberals to seek professional help with mental health issues or admit they have been diagnosed with a mental illness? Because that's what it would take to explain the data if that's your explanation 🙃
@slatestarcodex @GabrielRossman Look, if you want to say that this relationship between political views and mental illness should not be used to reject a political view on the ground that many of its proponents are mentally ill, then I completely agree. But don't bend over backward to explain away the data...
@slatestarcodex @GabrielRossman Since I was asked if I really believe that the relationship between political views and mental illness should not be used to reject a political view on the ground that many of its proponents are mentally ill, here is a thread where I elaborate on why.
