Depression, Sadness and the Politics of Mental Health

Abstract Christopher Ojeda's The Sad Citizen: How Politics Is Depressing and Why It Matters (University of Chicago Press, 2025) applies a stress-appraisal-coping framework to argue that political events perceived as irrevocable losses such as electoral defeats or adverse policy outcomes can produce depression, and that depression in turn fosters political withdrawal. In this review, I discuss the ways in which the book extends political emotions research beyond high-arousal states like anger and anxiety to chronic, low-arousal states that have been somewhat neglected in past studies. I also note that the book moves political emotions research in a positive direction by focusing on the adverse effects of political events on mental health. I applaud the focus on large-scale datasets (BRFSS, NLSY, and LISS) and the use of validated clinical inventories (K6 and CES-D) to better understand the link between political events and mental health. Finally, I situate the book within broader debates on emotion appraisal and regulation in political behavior research, and propose that political surveys more routinely incorporate validated depression batteries to track the psychological toll of political events over time.