Australia self-reported 6th least happy country in 2023 (out of 71 participating countries)

With the important asterisk that this report only included a fairly small range of countries. Of our nearest neighbours, only NZ, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines are included. No Indonesia, nowhere in Indochina, no China, Taiwan, Japan, or Korea, and no Pacific islands. Other missing countries that stood out to me: nowhere in Northern Europe, no Netherlands, no Greece or Turkije. No Palestine, and only a very small sample size from Israel. In Eastern Europe, every country represented had fewer than 1000 respondents, apart from Ukraine. No Russia. Only a small spattering of African nations.

Not to say that it isn't a good study and worthy of reporting on. Just that we can only describe our standing with respect to the 70 other countries represented, and only with low confidence with respect to the 12 of those with small sample sizes. When some of the more strongly-authoritarian regimes are left off, and so are some of the more famously-unhappy liberal democracies, it's just worth bearing that in mind.

A third of Australian respondents were in distress/struggling. That's the concerning statistic.

Even with a third of us in that state, we still managed an average Mental Health Quotient of 54% across the population. Which pretty-much says that two thirds of us are doing ok.

Mental State of the World Report asked participants to rate their mental health in 2023. Australians ranked among the least happy in general (out of 71 countries)

Averaged Scores (0 is poor, 100 is great):

• 54/100 Mood and Outlook
• 53/100 Social Self
• 70/100 Adaptability and Resilience
• 66/100 Drive and Motivation
• 70/100 Cognition
• 62/100 Mind Body Connection

Thanks for sharing this, I'm going to save it for later. From an initial skimming, it's got some stuff which really resonates with me. I'm interested in what it says about earlier first smartphone ownership, increased use of single use plastics and consumption of ultra high processed foods in wealthier countries.