Research
My research explores the following areas and questions:
- Mental health and politics: How do mental health problems influence the way people engage in politics? How does politics affect people's mental health? What are the determinants of policy attention and policy change on mental health?
- The psychological and political effects of COVID-19: How do COVID-19 stressors impact people's mental health and influence their political attitudes and behaviours?
- Mass-elite linkages: To what signals from public opinion do policymakers respond? To what extent do factors such as electoral incentives condition the link between public opinion and public policy? What are the consequences of government (non)responsiveness? What are the causes and consequences of voters' perceptions of parties' policy positions? Do voters punish and reward parties for what they say or what they do?
I invite any student who is interested in potential PhD research to contact me if they find any of the above areas appealing.
Currently, I am involved in the supervision of the following PhD students:
Daniel Bowman: The saliency and politics of mental health policy
Enis Porat: The role of immigrant-specific factors, issue and spatial voting, and transnationalism on the party choice of Dutch immigrant voters
Melanie Kennedy-Diver: Where are the disabled politicians? The barriers, disablism and ableism of physically disabled political candidates in the UK
Mental Health and Politics
Using data from cross-national and longitudinal surveys and from survey experiments, my research investigates the intersection between mental health problems, cognitive regulation processes and political engagement. In my research I explore whether and how mental health problems affect political attitudes and behaviours, but also the way people perceive and engage in politics, select and process information, and make political decisions. However, I am also interested in the effects of politics as a stress / risk factor for mental health and wellbeing.
Thanks to our initiative, validated scales for depression (CESD-8) and anxiety (GAD-7) have been included in a wave of the European Social Survey CRONOS-2 Panel in 12 European countries.
In addition, I study how people with mental health problems are represented in politics and policy and how the public perceives politicians with mental health problems. In "Mental Health and Political Representation: A Roadmap" (which has received more than 40,000 views since February 2021) I advance a research agenda on the topic.
Some of my work in progress can be found here:
Depression and negativity bias in political evaluations (ISPP 2019, EPSA 2019, with Robert Johns)
Kind of blue: Unpacking left-right to understand the policy preferences of individuals with depressive symptoms (ISPP 2020)
Leave me alone: Depression, item response, and political representation (APSA 2021, with Robert Johns)
Affective polarisation and mental health (ECPR 2022, EPOP 2022, with Yair Amitai and James Adams)
The Psychological and Political Effects of COVID-19
As PI, I received funding from:
2020 - University of Liverpool Early Career Researcher Fund. Project Title: Mental Health, Disability and Politics: £1970
2020 - COVID-19 ODA Rapid Response Funding. Project Title: The effects of Covid-19 measures on mental health of Syrian refugees in Istanbul (Co-I: Dr Özge Zihnioğlu, Department of Politics, University of Liverpool). £10,000
2020 - The British Academy Special Research Grant on COVID-19 (COV19/200709). Project Title: The consequences of Covid-19 on mental health and political attitudes (Co-I Prof Ian H. Gotlib, Department of Psychology, Stanford University). £10,000
2022 - University of Liverpool Policy Research Support Fund (JYG10041). Project Title: COVID-19, Mental Health and Political Engagement in the UK. £21,000
2023 - Research England Public Policy Support Fund (PWG10029). Project Title: COVID-19, Mental Health and Political Engagement in the UK. £19,800
An overview of these projects can be found here: Impacts of COVID-19 on Mental Health.
I serve as advisor on politics and mental health in the OECD project Well-being and mental health – Towards an integrated policy approach led by Lara Fleischer, policy analyst at the OECD Centre for Well-being, Inclusion, Sustainability and Equality of Opportunity, with whom I have released a policy briefing with the Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place on the impact of COVID-19 stressors on mental health and political engagement in the UK.
Together with the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Vulnerable Groups to Pandemics, Dr Jo Daniels (Senior Lecturer and Clinical Psychologist at the University of Bath), the Forgotten Lives UK patient group and the National Clinical Expert Group, I work on the project Forsaken but Engaged: ongoing impact of COVID-19 on immunocompromised people.
Coverage
Bernardi, Luca, and Robert Johns. 2021. “Depression and attitudes to change in referendums: The case of Brexit.” European Journal of Political Research 60(2): 339–358. https://ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1475-6765.12398. ECPR The Loop BBC Radio 4 - Analysis, Do voters need therapy?
Bernardi, Luca. 2021. “Mental Health and Political Representation: A Roadmap.” Frontiers in Political Science 2(January): 1–13. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpos.2020.587588/full. OECD WISE - How to Make Societies Thrive? Coordinating Approaches to Promote Well-being and Mental Health
Adams, James, Luca Bernardi, Lawrence Ezrow, and Zeynep Somer-Topcu. 2023. “Why Parties Gain Votes When the Public Perceives Them Shifting to the Right.” Political Studies. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00323217231178979. The Conversation
Bernardi, Luca, Giovanni Sala, and Ian H. Gotlib. 2024. “A cognitive model of depression and political attitudes.” Electoral Studies 87(February). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2023.102737. PsyPost
Research grants
The consequences of Covid-19 responses on mental health and political attitudes
BRITISH ACADEMY (UK)
July 2020 - September 2021