ArticlePloS one2026
Who cares about mental health? Benchmarking the issue importance of mental health for American voters".
Article in PloS one, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
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Authors and funding
1 author.
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Abstract
Existing scholarship on public opinion and mental health in the US has emphasized variations in Americans' stated support for policies or investments intended to address mental health. This work has shown that overall support for these policies is quite high, suggesting that scholars of public opinion may be focusing on the wrong dependent variable. This study asks a different question: to what degree is mental health an important voting issue for Americans, and what groups consider it especially important? Using a high-quality nationally representative sample of 1000 American adults from the 2024 Cooperative Election Study, I use recently developed experimental methods to assess how important hypothetical candidates' position on a mental health policy proposal (the Better Health Care for Americans Act) is to vote choice relative to nine other salient policy issues, including border security, abortion, and student loan forgiveness. The results suggest that mental health is of substantial importance, and especially so for liberals, higher-income people, and those in relatively poor health. These findings suggest that championing action on mental health could bring political rewards to policymakers.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.