With conversations around mental health growing more in prominence each day, a new study from University of Missouri aims to start another conversation surrounding mental health policy and its impact on voters' decisions in the voting booth.
The study was conducted by Jake Haselwerdt, who serves as an associate professor for the University of Missouri’s College of Arts and Sciences and had conducted previous research on mental health as a policy issue.
“If you ask people, 'Do you support regulations to make sure insurance covers mental health care?’ or ‘ Do you support funding for mental health care services?’ the answer is generally yes,” Haselwerdt said.
Haselwerdt’s research suggests that voters are more likely to vote for a candidate that shares their views on mental health policy more than they are on other major topics such as border security and taxes for the wealthy.
“I was interested in, you know, do people's personal experiences affect how they think about mental health policy?" Haselwerdt said.
Haselwerdt conducted his research using a representative sample of 1,000 voting aged adults from survey data from the Cooperative Election Study in partnership with YouGov, a national representative survey.
Participants in the survey were asked whether or not a politician's support or endorsement of a federal mental health bill, such as the Better Mental Health Care for American Act, would influence their support for the candidate.
Haselwerdt’s ultimate goal is to help politicians to see the benefits of publicly endorsing and talking more often about mental health policy
“I hope that it starts to stir a conversation," Haselwerdt said. "My motivation in doing this is, ‘Why isn't the government doing more? Why aren't politicians doing more?’ And certainly, some are. Some choose to champion this issue. But it hasn't really broken through. So I hope that this can get a conversation started about how this could be politically rewarding for politicians.”
