Does mental health mobilize or de-mobilize political participation?

My Thoughts

I initially went into this question with a lot of certainty, logically, it only makes sense that with mental health symptoms it would completely de-mobilize people into political participation. I've always imagined it with severe depression: no one wants to get out of bed, you feel so withdrawn society doesn't matter. Surprisingly, just like anything and everything else that is studied, it really all is on a scale.

I came across this study: Poor mental health does not always reduce political

participation: Wrong assumption, wrong samples, or

wrong measures?

Which suggests that based on their data, there are some scenarios where mental health actually mobilizes to participate more in politics, while in others it may not. Which as I peeled back the layers made more sense than my one-sided judgement.

Every human being copes and finds their solutions to problems in various ways and to think that everyone who has mental health would just dis-engage is a bias that I have as a mental health practitioner.

Within this study, the researchers suggest that the data out there may not be equipped or may not be asking the "right" questions to highlight the intersection between mental health and political participation. My assumption to this is because not many political scientists are mental health clinicians, they may be mental health curious, which is not the same as being formally trained to be able to treat and diagnose mental health disorders.

Which got me thinking... just like any disorder, it's on a spectrum and that spectrum can have various different results, but there will be some form of commonality that can help us further understand the how more deeply. I wonder if we look at PTSD, Anxiety, Personality Disorders, etc and begin to scale them with political engagement versus disengagement would we find some interesting trends to how the symptoms are showing up as resilience or maladaptive patterns.

It's curious isn't it? Political behavior is a behavior but is often suggested to be outside of emotional functioning, maybe this would de-bunk that argument with even deeper understanding of the nueroscience behind these disorders and which parts of the brain are activated inh relation to political behavior.