Our list of the most depressed countries in the world in 2017 is a stark reminder of the existence of a serious illness, which is underdiagnosed and often not treated at all, to the point that there are over 300 million depressed people in the world.
You might think that the world has improved leaps and bounds in the last century or so, and technology has played a crucial rule in this. But wait, you say, technology has made our leaves easier. After all, you can now exchange messages with loved ones thousands of miles away in the blink of an eye. Such a feat would have been considered impossible less than 50 years ago. However, for me, technology has increased competition and pressure in a manner that has seen suicide rates steadily increase each year. The one thing that older generations had, and we are now deprived of, is peace. Peace of mind no longer exists. We barely finish one thing before we move onto another. And it is never enough. We believe we have goals and that we’re going somewhere, but in the end, all we manage to accomplish is running around in circles.
This is a global phenomenon, and not restricted to a few countries or even continents. Europe, which is considered to be one of the most advanced continents in the world, has also seen a lot of depression in recent years. According to recent statistics, topping the list of most depressed countries in Europe is Ukraine. However, Europe also tends to be host to the happiest countries in the world. If that is more up your alley, head on over to the 10 least depressed countries in the world.
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There is a significant relationship between depression and anxiety. Anxiety quite often results in depression, and it is up to the people to get anxiety diagnosed before it turns into depression. Surprisingly, if you consider anxiety rates by country, you’ll notice that the rich countries tend to have a higher anxiety rate than the poor ones.
It is important to remember that depression is not a new disease; it has just never been diagnosed as such. Previously, it was considered to be a weakness and hence, people were often forced to hide it instead of seeking treatment. Go back just a few years ago and check out depression rates by country 2014, for example. What are you going to realize is that depression rate is rising rapidly. Meaning, more and more people out there are seeking help. In case you want to learn about depression rates in 2015, you should head on over to the 11 countries with the highest depression rates in the world.
While improvements have been made in the diagnosis of depression, the only way this can be significantly expedited is if we start to accept mental illness as a proper illness rather than a weakness. Mental illness is synonymous with depression; people with mental illnesses are far more likely to be depressed than those who don’t have one. This may lead you to wonder what country has the most mental illness? The answer to that, unsurprisingly, is USA.
The first step to eradicating or at least controlling depression is to determine the most depressed countries in the world in 2017. Since the year 2017 is still ongoing, we’ve had to rely on statistics relating to depression statistics by country 2016. For this, we obtained the World Happiness Report 2017, and worked our way down, with the country falling last in the report, being the most depressed country while the countries which topped the list were among the least depressed countries. We also obtained the WHO report on Depression and Other Common Mental Disorders, which formed another criterion for our rankings. We calculated the average rankings of the countries in each report, and to find out what ended up with, please read further on!
