Young and left-wing are part of ’emerging mental health political identity’
The Ivy League is having a mental health crisis.
“Forty-seven percent of surveyed seniors indicated that they experienced mental illness at some point in their time at Harvard, and 13 percent said they were unsure,” according to a survey of the Class of 2026 conducted by the Harvard Crimson student newspaper. That’s more than double the rate of the general adult U.S. population, which the federal government’s National Institute of Mental Health estimates at 23.1 percent, noting that “Mental illnesses include many different conditions that vary in degree of severity, ranging from mild to moderate to severe.”
At Princeton, a senior survey conducted by the Princetonian student newspaper found 60.1 percent had mental health counseling or therapy during college, with 36.3 percent getting help from the university’s counseling and psychological services and 23.8 percent finding outside assistance. That’s also much higher than the overall population; NPR reported last year on a study that found “the number of American adults getting outpatient talk therapy grew from 6.5% to 8.5%.”
Yale faced a 2022 federal lawsuit for failing to accommodate “students with mental health disabilities.” Students and alumni, organized in groups such as Mental Health Justice at Yale, the Yale Law School Mental Health Alliance, and Elis for Rachael, are still advocating; a recent Yale Daily News opinion piece, published under the headline “Yalies for mental health,” laments the quality of the counseling services on offer at the university, arguing, “many students still wait unacceptably long to see a therapist. For instance, upon returning from summer vacation, students do not automatically continue seeing their therapist from the previous school year. Instead, they must undergo the placement process all over again, unnecessarily lengthening the time it takes to be matched with a therapist. Yale has not met student requests for a more diverse range of therapists. Yale still does not offer an affordable Preferred Provider Organization option for health insurance. And Yale did not agree to implement annual mental health first-aid training for students, faculty, staff and administrators.”
Potential causes of the trends are multifarious. As with mild autism and learning disabilities of the sort that generate eligibility for untimed standardized tests, it’s unclear how much of the increase is in incidence and how much is in identification—that is, are today’s students really more depressed, anxious, or panicked than previous generations, or are they and the grownups around them simply more likely to diagnose and label their maladies as mental illness? It could be that both dynamics are operating.
Among the factors are federal legislation—the Mental Health Parity Act of 1996 and the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008—that may have helped make students and parents more aware of eligibility for services. Technological advances have made talk therapy readily available on telehealth platforms, so, ironically, students can visit a mental-health provider online in search of a cure for what Anxious Generation author Jonathan Haidt calls an “epidemic of teen mental illness” created by the replacement of “play-based childhood” with “phone-based childhood.” Popular culture is also a factor: Star performing artists such as Noah Kahan and Taylor Swift talk openly about their issues.
And it may just be that students on overwhelmingly politically liberal Ivy League campuses are more likely to identify as mentally ill than other Americans are. An assistant professor of political science at Utah State University, Lauren Van De Hey, wrote a paper, “Just a Little Melancholic, Maybe a Little Blue: Mental Health as an Emerging Political Identity,” published in April 2026, describing what she called “an emerging mental health political identity that is most pronounced among younger (Gen Z) and more liberal Americans.”
Van De Hey’s paper notes that “some research has found that liberals (Democrats) have worse reported mental health than conservatives (Republicans).” Her paper contains a chart that graphically displays the disparity.
“Those more likely to categorize as having a mental illness are more likely to have a college degree; be a Democrat, liberal, and White; and have slightly lower family income,” Van De Hey writes.
The paper includes a discussion of the findings. “Are liberals (Democrats) and conservatives (Republicans) really that different when it comes to mental health prevalence and/or identification? Initial work … has confirmed a gap between the parties, but is this because Republicans (conservatives) do not consider anxiety and depression to be mental illnesses at the same rate as Democrats (liberals)? Is this because of a personal responsibility ethos or other shared Republican predispositions? If so, it could lead Republicans (conservatives) to seek treatment at a lower rate than Democrats (liberals) because Republicans (conservatives) will not seek treatment for something they do not consider a medical condition.” She says more work is needed on the topic.
The fact that the student newspaper surveys are even asking questions about the issue is a sign of its salience. The Crimson senior survey also found, “Seniors reported continued support for the pro-Palestine Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement as Israel’s war in Gaza continues into its third year and after a sharp increase in Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon. More than 40 percent of respondents view the movement favorably, increasing 5 percentage points from last year’s graduating class.” Israel reached a ceasefire in Gaza in October 2025, so the contention that “Israel’s war in Gaza continues into its third year” is itself a kind of delusion, and the support for BDS—a movement to wipe Israel off the map—from the seniors is evidence that Harvard is failing to educate the students. The survey found 65.6 percent of Harvard students identifying as either “progressive” or “very progressive.”
One has to be careful in writing about this—the last thing I’d want to do would be to discourage any student who needs help from seeking or getting it. Mental illness is a real thing, and treatment can help, in some cases saving lives. Yet with that crucial caveat, it’s also hard to avoid wondering in some cases whether the politics are a consequence of the illness, or the illness is a consequence of the politics. I watched a lot of anti-Israel protests at Harvard, and even read some of the poetry and journal articles. Without singling out any individual participants or casting any stigma on people seeking or getting needed treatment, it’s hard to avoid noticing the strong likelihood of some overlap in the Venn diagram between the 47 percent who experienced mental illness and the 40 percent who view BDS favorably to the point of setting up tents in a Harvard Yard “encampment” or interrupting classes with megaphones or occupying buildings in protests. I’m not a forensic psychiatrist, but some people are just unmistakably crazy.
It’s not even limited to Israel or Gaza; it extends to the Trump administration. Even the most cheerful among us might get depressed listening to professors and even administrators drone on all day about how the president is destroying democracy. Students are one thing. A poll that would be really telling would be of the reported mental health of the faculty, deans, and administrators.
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