The mental health consequences of social justice fundamentalism

Data shows that the farther left you lean, the more anxious, depressed, and unhappy you are

In their 2015 article and 2018 book, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Greg and Jonathan Haidt argue that cognitive distortions (practices like catastrophizing, black and white thinking, overgeneralizing, discounting positives, and emotional reasoning) and overprotecting children results in an external locus of control, helplessness and despair, and both the mental health crisis and the rampant culture of illiberalism on campus that we’re seeing today.

Certainly, the two major concerns from the 2015 article have borne out, with academic freedom and free speech on campus being threatened at an unprecedented scale since 2014 — but especially since 2017 — and mental health of young people tanking to a degree even greater than even Greg and Jon ever predicted. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has reported consistent and rapid increases in the rates of suicide and depression in teens (12-17) and young adults (18-25) since at least 2012. Just last year, nearly 20% of teens (12-17) and a similar number of young adults (18-25) reported experiencing a major depressive episode. This is compared to just 7% in adults older than 25 last year, and just 9% of teens and young adults back in 2012.

Something is clearly happening, but what’s the cause? The recent documentary film “The Coddling of the American Mind,” directed by Ted Balaker, showcases how the adoption of what Tim Urban calls “social justice fundamentalism” (a.k.a.  “Wokeness” — a term we don’t love) and its associated catastrophizing spirals led three of the film’s protagonists, Kimi, Lucy, and Saeed, into feelings of hopelessness and despair.

However, those are experiences of a select few students. Is there really a significant  connection between the illiberal ideologies on college campuses and the mental health decline of college students?

To find out, we used responses collected from FIRE’s 2024 College Free Speech Rankings to answer two questions:

1. Are students with poor self-reported mental health also more supportive of illiberal protest?

2. Are students on the ideological left more prone to self-reported feelings of poor mental health? 

The CFSR survey asked 55,102 students across 254 schools five questions about their mental health:

How often would you say that you feel…

1. Anxious?

2. Lonely or isolated?

3. Depressed?

4. Like you have no time for yourself?

5. Stressed, frustrated, or overwhelmed?

Participants were able to answer “Never,” “Less than half the time,” “About half the time,” “Most of the time (nearly every day),” and “Always.”

The students were not asked about evaluations from mental health professionals, nor were they evaluated by any for the purposes of our study. This data only gives insight into their subjective experience of their feelings. References to “mental health” in our data are describing self-reported levels and measures of well-being. According to the 2022 SAMHSA National Survey on Drug Use and Health, a whopping 36.2% of respondents aged 18-25 reported a diagnosable mental illness according to the DSM IV in the last year.

Liberal students have worse mental health than moderate and conservative students

At the extremes, 57% of very liberal students in our study reported feelings of poor mental health at least half the time, compared to just 34% of very conservative students. Let that sink in. 34% is really quite bad, but 57% is approaching a figure of 2 out of every 3 very liberal students.

The graph above shows that as students move further to the left, they are more likely to have poor mental health — suggesting that it’s not just liberal ideology that impacts mental health, but also the extremity of their beliefs. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests show ideology is a statistically significant predictor of mental health. Post-hoc tests demonstrate it predicts in the direction as shown: more liberal, worse mental health. So far, the data is consistent with the findings of others (Zach Goldberg and Jon Haidt using Pew Research’s data, and Gimbrone et al.), and supportive of the hypothesis that “social justice fundamentalism” can be contributing negatively to the mental health of those who adopt it.

Liberal female and non-binary students have the worst self-reported mental health.

The trends of declining mental health as students get more liberal is present in all genders (female, male and nonbinary), but female and non-binary students more frequently report poor mental health. 

Only 41% of very liberal males report feelings of poor mental health more than half the time, compared to 60% of very liberal females, and a whopping 70% of very liberal non-binary students. There also appears to be a more rapid rise in students experiencing poor mental health as they move left. The percentage of non-binary students with poor self-reported mental health rises 18 points as they move from moderate to very liberal. The percentage point gap for moderate non-binary students to very conservative non-binary students is only 4%, suggesting that there is a more rapid decline in self-reported mental health as students move further to the left — a pattern that is not seen in students as they move further to the right.

The graph below shows the percentage of each gender that reported feelings of poor mental health half the time or more.  

Across the board, the self-reported mental health of non-binary and female students is frighteningly poor. At its lowest, still, half (51%) of very conservative non-binary students (n = 190) and 41% of very  conservative female students report poor mental health at least half the time. 

Students' tolerance for illiberal protest is alarmingly high 

Acceptability of illiberal protest (i.e., shoutdowns of disfavored speakers and violence to block students from attending a campus speech) is somewhat similar among those with poor mental health and not, although those with poor mental health are slightly more tolerant of illiberal protest. Interestingly, conservative male students with poor mental health are more accepting of illiberal protest than conservative female students. The same trend is not seen among males and females who report poor mental health less than half the time, suggesting that mental health among males could be impacting their acceptability of illiberal protest. 

Across the board though, acceptability of illiberal protest is alarmingly high — particularly among liberal students, and even more so among non-binary students. Acceptance among non-binary students hovers around a whopping 80% regardless of ideology and mental health. Among males and female students, there is a greater range of acceptance of illiberal protest. Nearly one in three (30%) to three in four (75%) female students are accepting of illiberal protest to some degree. Among male students, the rate of acceptance is similar to females.

If we know students on the left report feeling more anxious, depressed, and stressed, perhaps their acceptance of illiberal protest is a reflection of the manifestations of their cognitive distortions? The intensity of their feelings and fears seem to justify the extremity of their actions, or their acceptance of the extreme actions of others (e.g., “If this speaker comes on campus, my life is in danger — so I must react accordingly”).

The solution to this mental health crisis is clear: teach and reinforce better habits

In some ways, one could say that this research is not particularly surprising. Men generally have been more supportive of freedom of speech historically in polling, and women have had substantially higher rates of mood disorders like depression and anxiety. Also, as Musa al-Gharbi points out, liberals have historically been less happy and had higher rates of depression than conservatives as well.

Jon and Greg noticed this same phenomenon when they were working on “The Coddling of the American Mind.” It hasn’t changed since.

Well, there is one big change. The numbers have gotten far more dramatic. 

So, why have students on the left become more depressed? Greg thinks the answer may lie in a shift from the left-liberalism that was dominant on campus when he was in school in the 1990s to the left-progressivism of today and social justice fundamentalism. 

Put simply, social justice fundamentalism includes the incorporation of more cognitively distorted ways of thinking — which was, in many ways, the primary argument put forth in Greg and Jon’s 2015 article in The Atlantic. To be fair, the dominant left-liberalism of campus in the 90s certainly had some catastrophizing. It had some blaming. But it also had many positive and hopeful aspects, like a belief in self-expression, authenticity, individuality, technological progress, openness, a strong defense of satire and humor — and even, for better or worse, some amount of hedonism. 

Social justice fundamentalism, on the other hand, seems to incorporate a great many rigid concepts that could understandably be depressing and anxiety-producing. Take “intersectionality,” one of the key concepts underlying social justice fundamentalism. It was first popularized by Kimberlé Crenshaw, and claims that everyone can be placed on a spectrum — from oppressed to oppressor — based on a number of intersecting identity characteristics (often immutable) ranging from gender identity to wealth, race, disability, and so on. 

Although some may claim that intersectionality can be a simple, cold observation that doesn’t necessarily carry any moral weight, Jon and Greg argued in “Coddling” that, in practice, a concept like that is unlikely to be limited to mere explanation. Rather, it quickly turns into a low-resolution narrative which, in its simplest form, claims that the less oppressed you are, the more you can be blamed for society’s problems and, as a result, the worse of a person you become. 

In practice, intersectionality is a combination of two cognitive distortions: overgeneralizing and blaming. It also arose from a perspective in which the world is utterly dominated by impersonal forces, against which human beings are simply objects that are acted upon rather than people with agency. Within this framework, individuals understandably don't really feel like they have an internalized locus of control — or an ability to guide the course of their own lives.

That is a depressing and anxiety-producing worldview.

It's worth noting (and sometimes this confuses people who don't do the math) that because intersectional analysis includes both women, gay people, everyone with disabilities, and all or at least most non-white people, it will lead to a large majority of people living in the United States being labeled “oppressed.” This idea has many effects, but it may be worst for women’s mental health. 

Under this framework, the overwhelming majority of women will be simultaneously deemed both “oppressed” and “oppressors,” which can be psychologically difficult to reconcile and weaponized against them. As revealed in Nellie Bowles' new book, “The Morning After the Revolution,” various DEI trainers often tell women that there's little more they can do about this moral superposition — which they cannot change — apart from constantly feeling terrible and apologetic, and isolating themselves in order to cope.

This seems like a very strange way to build a movement. If we really want to change the world in a positive direction, generating activists who feel powerless in their struggles and the world as incapable of change is counterproductive, at the very least.

As far as the data shows, what seems like a blindfolded dive into illiberal ideology has left students on the left more miserable than ever. Schools should thoughtfully consider the cognitive distortions they are endorsing through their policies, and take care not to encourage students to catastrophize, adopt learned helplessness, or practice other cognitive distortions proven to worsen mental health. 

Instead, students should be encouraged to engage in difficult conversations and be cognizant of the echo chambers they may be a part of. They should develop what Nassim Nicholas Taleb has dubbed “antifragility”:

Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure , risk, and uncertainty… Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.

As Greg and Jon outlined in “Coddling,” we have been teaching our youth the mental habits of anxious and depressed people. It’s no surprise, therefore, that we now have data showing many young people suffering from negative mental health issues. And it’s no surprise that these numbers increase the more bought into “social justice fundamentalism” these young people are, given the particular ideas forwarded by that ideology. But if we begin teaching our youth antifragility rather than fragility, that words are not violence, that exposure to dissent not only doesn’t hurt you but actually makes you a stronger, more capable thinker and person, it will be no surprise when we start seeing the mental health of young people increase over time.

SHOT FOR THE ROAD

Check out this update on one of my all-time favorite FIRE cases, Diei v. Boyd; University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center, in which a school of pharmacy threatened to expel a student for the crime of … posting about Cardi B on her personal social media account.