#self id

Reminder of what Jones means when he insinuates that the anti-trans have incredible power and that they are supposedly attacking a """"besieged minority"""" by saying the truth, in essence.

Our latest polling suggests that a large proportion of Americans with no, or only mild, mental health symptoms nevertheless believe “mental health challenges are an important part of my identity.” Here, we consider the identity-symptom gap.

By: Kevin McCaffree & Anondah Saide

Executive Overview

Around 3 in 4 GenZ women and GenZ liberals believe “mental health challenges are an important part of my identity.”

Around 3 in 4 Millennial men and Millennial liberals believe “mental health challenges are an important part of my identity.”

The tendency to believe that mental illness is important to one’s identity is driven more by age/generation than by sex or political orientation.

Women in each generation were more likely to believe “mental health challenges are an important part of my identity,” with one exception—Millennials. Millennial men are the only group more likely to identify as mentally ill than the women in their cohort.

Baby Boomers and political conservatives were least likely to say being mentally ill is an important part of their identity. GenX Americans reported mid-level prevalence rates.

Large proportions of Americans with no, or only mild, mental health symptoms believe “mental health challenges are an important part of my identity.”

Mental health symptoms do not appear to be the main driver of identification as mentally ill. 

Background

In a survey conducted last year1 with over 3,000 Americans, we found that those who believed mental illness was an “important part” of their identity tended to be younger and politically liberal (see Figure 1 below). Gen Z (i.e., those born between 1997–2006) were the most likely, and Baby Boomers (i.e., those born between 1946–1964) were the least likely, to think mental illness was an important part of their identity. Specifically, around 3 in every 4 GenZ liberals in the United States agreed that being mentally ill was important to their identity compared to only around 1 in 3 Baby Boomer liberals. And, though rates of identification with mental health challenges was lower overall among Baby Boomers, liberals in that cohort still identified with being mentally ill at higher rates than did conservatives.

[ Figure 1. Results from our 2024 Survey Indicating Prevalence of a “Mentally Ill” Identity ]

Our 2024 survey also revealed that identification with mental health challenges was associated with being politically uninformed in a cynical direction. For example, those who said being mentally ill was important to their identity also tended to overestimate the national poverty rate as well as the pace of climate change. Preliminarily, this suggested to us that identification as mentally ill might be, in part, a response to cultural trends towards political polarization and cynicism.2

Our 2024 survey revealed something else that had gone previously undiscovered: many of those identifying with a mental health challenge had no, or few, mental illness symptoms. That is, the correlation between identification with mental health challenges and an actual validated measure of depression3 was only moderate (i.e., r = .41). This provided a clear indication that peoples’ (particularly young peoples’) identification as mentally ill might be driven by something other than an actual increase in mental illness. However, we did not assess the prevalence of people’s identification as mentally ill absent (or with only mild) mental health symptoms.

Updated Findings and New Breakthroughs

In our new survey, conducted just a few months ago in 2025, we attempted to both replicate our 2024 findings, and further explore the extent to which a “mental illness” identity might be based on social trends instead of mental health symptoms. Before we discuss our findings, let’s consider, first, the questions asked and the efforts made to ensure the highest-quality data.

Methodology and Data Quality

The data from this report comes from the American Political Perspectives Survey (APPS) collected from August 3, 2025, to September 26, 2025, with 3,000 American adults who speak English. All respondents needed to pass (1) four attention checks, (2) a duplication check, (3) time-to-completion checks (i.e., those taking the survey in under 7 minutes were dropped), (4) fraud checks, and (5) bot-identification checks.

Quota sampling was used to approximate a representative sample of the U.S. public regarding sex, race, age, and educational attainment. Quotas were determined using U.S. Census data. Additional attempts were made to oversample Asians. Respondents were recruited using Qualtrics Panel Services.

To measure mental health identity, survey takers were shown the following statement and asked to indicate their agreement using a 6-point scale from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”: “Mental health challenges are an important part of my identity.” To measure anxiety severity, survey takers took the generalized anxiety disorder 7-item scale (GAD-7).4 This measure is used in formal clinical settings and measures the frequency of symptoms over the last 2 weeks. To measure depression severity, survey takers took the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9).5 This measure is also used in formal clinical settings and measures the frequency of symptoms over the last two weeks.

Generation, Sex, and Politics

The results of our new survey revealed, once again, that GenZ and Millennial adults agree with the statement, “mental health challenges are an important part of my identity,” more often than other age groups. The highest rates of agreement were found among GenZ women (81 percent agreed with the statement) and GenZ liberals (78 percent agreed), with Millennial men (77 percent agreed) and Millennial liberals (76 percent agreed) not far behind (see Figures 2 and 3 below).

[ Figure 2. Mental Illness Identity by Generation and Sex ]

[ Figure 3. Mental Illness Identity by Generation and Political Orientation ]

Still, overall rates of agreement were not importantly different among GenZ and Millennials regardless of sex or politics, suggesting this is a dynamic being driven by age much more than by sex or political orientation. We did detect an interesting rate-reversal among Millennials: while women, in general, more often said mental illness is important to their identity, Millennial men were the only group more likely to agree with this than the women in their cohort. 

By contrast, Baby Boomers and political conservatives were the least likely to say mental health challenges are an important part of their identity, with GenX Americans reporting mid-level prevalence rates. Far fewer than half of Baby Boomers—regardless of their sex or political orientation—agreed with this statement. The lowest prevalence rate in this analysis was found among Baby Boomer conservatives, with 27 percent of conservative Baby Boomers saying mental health challenges are an important part of their identity.  

Keep in mind that prior research has found rates of depression and anxiety do, indeed, increase with age, as an expected consequence of declining health and decreasing autonomy.6 Thus, despite the expected decline in mental health among older Americans, younger Americans are still reporting far higher prevalence rates of identification as mentally ill. That is revealing. Here we consider what might be at work here.

Claiming to Be Mentally Ill Versus Being Mentally Ill

The key focus of our 2025 survey was to investigate the disconnect we first unearthed in 2024 between saying that one’s mental health challenges are an important part of their identity versus actually suffering from mental illness.  To do so, we assessed the two most common mental health challenges faced by Americans—anxiety and depression. According to the National Institute of Mental Health and related sources, at some point in their lives around 1 in 3 adults will be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and around 1 in 4 adults will be diagnosed with a depressive disorder.7, 8

Take a look at Figure 4, below, which depicts the proportion of people saying, “mental health challenges are an important part of my identity,” as it relates to their reporting of actual mental illness symptoms (using the formal clinical measures, GAD-7 and PHQ-9, as described above).

[ Figure 4. Percent of Americans Identifying as Mentally Ill by Mental Health Symptoms ]

Unsurprisingly, over 80 percent of those actually suffering from moderate or severe anxiety also told us that mental health challengers are an important part of their identity. We found a similar result for depression—76 percent of those with moderate depressive symptoms and over 80 percent of those with moderate-severe or severe depressive symptoms agreed that mental health challenges were an important part of their identity.

However, and much more interestingly, we found that about 70 percent of those with only mild anxiety symptoms, and nearly half of those with only minimal anxiety, nevertheless told us that mental illness was an important part of their identity. Additionally, 2 in 3 Americans with mild depression, about half of those with minimal depression, and over 1 in 3 Americans with no depressive symptoms at all nevertheless told us that mental health challenges were an important part of their identity. 

Examined another way, what you see in Figures 5 and 6 below is that there is a very small difference in anxiety and depression-related symptoms between those who identify with mental health challenges and those who do not. For example, among Millennials, there was less than a 1-point difference (and no meaningful qualitative difference in severity) in anxiety symptoms between those who identify with mental health challenges and those who do not. Even though the difference in anxiety symptoms between those who identify as mentally ill and those who do not was generally small, among Baby Boomers the gap was somewhat larger (~2.2 points). 

The difference in depression symptoms between those who identify as mentally ill and those who do not was also small, but somewhat larger for Gen X’ers and Baby Boomers (1.85 and 1.76, respectively), relative to Gen Z’ers and Millennials (0.61 and 0.64, respectively).

This tells us something important: actual mental health symptoms is not what is driving peoples’ tendency to identify as mentally ill, and this is especially the case among younger generations of adults, which suggests social factors may be operating here.

[ Figure 5. Average Anxiety Score by Mental Health Identification ]

[ Figure 6. Average Depression Score by Mental Health Identification ]

Summary and Conclusion

Let’s first anticipate some comments about our findings.

Some might say that the finding of a weak relationship between identifying as mentally ill and actually reporting mental health symptoms is misleading, because we only measured anxiety and depression. Well, yes, there are certainly other mental health ailments we could have measured, from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), to alcohol use disorder (AUD), to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), to schizophrenia. However, the vast majority of people diagnosed with a mental health disorder in the United States are diagnosed with anxiety or depression and, moreover, most mental illnesses (such as those above) are typically comorbid with anxiety and depression. That is, even mental health ailments that are diagnosed as something other than anxiety or depression (e.g., PTSD, OCD, etc.) very often overlap in symptoms with anxiety or depression.9 Overall, this suggests that our choice to focus just on depression and anxiety productively balances our desire for both exhaustiveness and parsimony.

Another point to address is the possibility that the particular phrase used in our survey question—“mental health challenges”—might mean something different depending on your generation. Perhaps, for a Baby Boomer, a “mental health challenge” means something serious, like major depression, whereas for a Millennial or GenZ, it might mean any sort of unhappiness or discontent. This may be true; younger generations might have a lower threshold for, or a broader definition of what constitutes a “mental health challenge.” But this begs the question: why might GenZ have a lower bar for identifying as mentally ill?

Ultimately, our results are consistent with one of two interpretations. (1) GenZ and Millennial Americans are more mentally fragile than prior generations; (2) GenZ and Millennial Americans are more motivated to identify with mental illness, regardless of actual symptoms. To this end, our assessment of actual mental health symptoms moves the discussion forward in an important way—over a third of people who scored “0” on both depression and anxiety symptoms nevertheless told us that mental health challenges are an important part of their identity. A discrepancy between saying mental illness is important to one’s identity, but not actually being depressed or anxious, existed for all groups in our survey, but the discrepancy was largest among younger cohorts. This is suggestive evidence that younger Americans may be more motivated to identify as mentally ill without suffering from symptoms of mental illness.

So why might Americans (especially younger ones) be so motivated to construe themselves as mentally ill? This is a complex question with many possible answers. One likely answer has to do with the increasing prevalence of therapists, psychiatrists and other “mental health workers” in popular culture and on school campuses. According to official projections, mental health workers will continue to outpace other occupations in growth at least through 2032.10 This means, at nearly every turn, whether on social media or in school, younger Americans may be encouraged to understand themselves in terms of diagnostic criteria and classification schemes—they may be “overmedicalized” by parents, school authorities, and passively by social media.11 Our pattern of findings in this report is consistent with the observation that this medicalization trend (and percent of the workforce employed as mental health workers) has increased over time, beginning in the 1960s.

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Speak Up for Women is organising the New Zealand branch of this global protest in solidarity with our sisters in Germany. Some very cruel and harmful self ID laws will come into effect on November first and international feminists are being asked to protest at their local german embassies. Please support or join this protest if you are able!

Why did I decide to do it this way again? Oh, right, because it's FUN.

Anyways, Hi.

I'm Dee. 46 year old trans woman. On HRT for almost 3 years now. Queer lesbian. Poly and kinky. Absolutely Not Your Responsible Adult (I will not screen off porn, sex positivity, body positivity, and a few other things. if you need censor your own experience for whatever reason, don't follow me, because I will not censor myself for you.)

Got the basics? Good. Now for the advanced. I still don't know what a jerma is, nor do I want to, I don't sell content, I do absolutely support those who do, and so should you. Yes there's a discord. Yes you have to actually ask me for an invite. No, I really am only 5'6". Yes, I'll still record voice requests, even scripted bits. No, you may not call me mommy. I work full time when I'm not being a mom (which has, unfortunately eaten a LOT more of my time than normal this year) as an artist, writer, and leatherworker. You'll find a lot of it available for purchase right here: http://tormentedartifacts.com Here's a few highlights:

I'm also working on teaching myself tattooing, both on myself (Over the last 4 years, yes most of the ink in my selfies was done by me) and a few other willing victims. Which also means building up a collection of flashwork to put on people. Here's some of that:

I'm a writer and occultist as I said before as well, and my first book and companion tarot deck are available through my site, or you can catch me doing weekly card readings and media reviews over here.

The absolute biggest thing right now, though, is my surgery fund- My Gender Confirmation and Facial Feminization operations both happen this November over a two week span, and I'm trying to get enough in to cover my stay and the downtime I'm going to have to take off from everything up there.

So here's the link for my GoFundMe for that.

if you can kick in on that, or just spread word around of it elsewhere, I'd REALLY appreciate it.

Terfs, swerfs, bigots, conservaties, and other fash can fuck directly off. Tipping should be mandatory. Plastics suck, and yes that includes your vegan leather do not start me on that rant. Landlords and borders should be immediately expunged. Give the fucking Land Back. Do make it weird, do it alone if you have to, don't make it creepy. Start HRT if you haven't already. Do make it terrifying, otherworldly, and possibly even wondrous. Buy more leather.

ectoidentification

{pt: ectoidentification}

definition: the inverse of autoidentification (self-identification); the identifications made by others upon you