Why the study?
Despite the importance of national politicians, relatively little work has evaluated their wellbeing and psychological health, where neglect of unique and universal stressors may impact individuals and democracy.
Highlights the need for research into the mental wellbeing and unique stressors faced by national politicians.
May guide mental health support for politicians; leaves open empirical validation of the taxonomy.
Despite the singular importance of the work of national politicians in creating legislation, representing constituents and holding government to account, relatively little work has been done concerning their wellbeing and psychological health. There are unique, as well as universal, stressors that impact upon politicians; a neglect of these issues has profound consequences for those individuals and wider democracy. We propose a ‘taxonomy of stressors’ as a starting point for further inter-disciplinary and comparative research, and argue that it offers analytical leverage vis-à-vis a far broader set of debates concerning the future of representative democracy.
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Flinders et al. (2018) studied this question.
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