Aside from the weird capitalization of "Leftism", the author is evidently confused about a lot of things. Such as the fact that the interval in question was ne

Aside from the weird capitalization of "Leftism", the author is evidently confused about a lot of things. Such as the fact that the interval in question was nearly evenly split between D and R administrations, and that Obama was hardly a liberal icon. And he forgets the country's bend towards fascism in late 2016. But why would Leftism be associated with poorer mental health? An analysis of data from 86,138 adolescents found, in line with the Pew survey, that between 2005 and 2018 the self-reported mental health of liberals had deteriorated more than conservatives’, and that this deterioration was worst for girls. The researchers blamed this on “alienation within a growing conservative political climate”. However, the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg debunked this explanation by pointing out that liberals’ mental health woes began while Obama was in power and as the Supreme Court voted to extend gay marriage rights — hardly a conservative political climate. Not that this means the Pew study is valid, just that his own cause-and-effect reasoning is basically a distorted mirror of it, and equally dubious.