That isn’t surprising–social science data have long shown that conservatives are generally happier than liberals. But this study, which sampled 12th graders from 2005 through 2018, documents the deteriorating condition of liberals, and especially liberal girls:

Adolescent internalizing symptoms (e.g. depressive affect) have increased over the past decade in the US, particularly among girls. The reasons for these increases are unclear. We hypothesize that increasing exposure to politicized events has contributed to these trends in adolescent internalizing symptoms, and that effects may be differential by political beliefs and sociodemographic characteristics. … Depressive affect (DA) scores increased for all adolescents after 2010, but increases were most pronounced for female liberal adolescents…, and scores were highest overall for female liberal adolescents with low parental education…. Trends in adolescent internalizing symptoms diverged by political beliefs, sex, and parental education over time, with female liberal adolescents experiencing the largest increases in depressive symptoms…. These findings indicate a growing mental health disparity between adolescents who identify with certain political beliefs.

The fact that a lot of young liberal women are exhibiting mental health symptoms will not come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. The authors of this study appear to be liberals–their description of political events that occurred during the time covered by their study is laughable–but their conclusion is unavoidable.

What is most interesting to me is the time sequence. Consistent with many other surveys, conservatives have always been less depressed than liberals. Over the time period studied, however, depression for all categories of 12th graders increased, led by liberal girls. But look at the timing:

Depression among liberal girls started moving up around 2012 and continued rising thereafter. Conservatives held out a little longer, but they were getting more depressed by 2015, albeit not at the same level. Were political events or economic trends especially traumatizing during that time period? I don’t think so.

I suspect that two developments during that era contributed to adolescent depression. The first is growth in social media usage. But I don’t think that, by itself, explains much. I think what happened beginning around 2012, or shortly before then, was that the Left went bats**t crazy, fueled in considerable part by the far-left takeover of the public schools. The schools’ shift in emphasis from education to indoctrination, which was well under way by 2012, could be expected to have the most direct impact on high school students.

That is my theory, anyway. Feel free to offer your own in the comments.