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In the last couple of days it has been all over in the media the “happy” state of Canada: the University of Leicester produced the first-ever ‘world map of happiness‘ and our country ranked #10.

You can read more about the study conducted by Adrian White, an analytic social psychologist at the University’s School of Psychology or you can just go and play with the interactive world map of happiness.

Number One is Denmark from where I’ve got the most surprising letter ever in my life - about thirty-something years ago, written by a blond Scandinavian beauty: “Come here and marry me…”. At that time I used to live in a place now ranked #136 and with no chances to get out from there; practically it was a prison, as all the Eastern European communist countries used to “function”.

Out of curiousity I also checked a few places where I used to live and/or work in the past decades: they rank #167, 107, 137. (At the bottom of the list is Burundi - #178, but never been there…)

Everybody should be fully aware of the non-scientific nature of such rankings. While searching for Adrian White’s report I accidentally discovered another study, the Happy Planet Index, compiled by the British think-tank New Economics Foundation (NEF).

That one has a totally different ranking, with Vanuatu, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominica and Panama being the top five - while Canada ranks only #111. Out of the top industrialized countries Italy came out best in 66th place, ahead of Germany (81), Japan (95), Britain (108), Canada (111), France (129), the United States (150) and Russia, in lowly 172nd place.

This report hasn’t been as widely publicized as the #10, so let’s forget it and be happy about our happy state.

It happens that I often peek into the professional journals that come in my wife’s mail. Like the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry.
In the last issue there was a small booklet attached - Quick Facts: Mental Illness & Addiction in Canada published by the Mood Disorder Society of Canada.
See the brochure online at their website.

I am going to quote only five lines from it:

1. At any given time, percentage of Canadians who have a mental illness: 10.4%

2. Percentage of Canadians who will experience depression in their lifetime: 7.9 – 8.6%

3. Percentage of Canadians at any one point in time who are depressed: 4 – 5%

4. Percentage of Canadians who experience a major depression in their lifetime: 8%

and finally:

5. Percentage of the world’s population affected by serious mental illness: 2%

Because statisticians like to play with numbers and obscure definitions… “mental illness” and “serious mental illness” might not cover the same - see line 1 and 5. For which case I’d say, publish comparable data unless your goal is scaring people.
Anyway, the 4-5% of Canadians depressed “at any one point in time” makes me wonder - just how happy we really are? Or at all: are we?

Yes, I know, countries at the bottom of the world map of happiness list, usually, lack the resources to even bother about the percentage of depressed population, so - like with any statistics - playing the numbers game is useless. It is also true that in many places people just cannot afford the “luxury” of being depressed if their only (mental) preoccupation is the everyday survival.

Aren’t you happy that we live in a country where we can afford to be so happily depressed?