We guess you could make the argument that just because a nation is lower-income that it doesn’t mean the nation isn’t rich — rich in happiness, that is. Ha!
The study that claims the title of this post interviewed about 90,000 people in 18 different countries to come to that conclusion using a standardized test of 9 different criteria.
The proportion of people who have ever had an episode of clinical depression in their lifetime is 15% in the high-income nations and 11% in lower-income countries, the study estimates.
France (21%) and the United States (19%) had the highest rates, while China (6.5%) and Mexico (8%) had the lowest.
“Wherever you are, there’s always people doing better than you,” Bromet says. “You’d think that countries that are better off should have lower rates [of depression], but just because they have a high income doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of stress in the environment.”
Moreover, she adds, the richest countries in the world also tend to have the greatest levels of income inequality, which has been linked to higher rates of depression as well as many other chronic diseases.
We guess that goes to show that money and happiness aren’t completely mutually exclusive!
So even though you have enough money to buy that wave-runner to have some fun on the weekends, that doesn’t mean that the stress of how you got that money isn’t weighing on you and making you depressed!
We just need to find better, more comprehensive ways to battle depression and its side effects.
[Image via AP Images.]
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