Trending Science: The happiest place on Earth may not be in Scandinavia
The United Nations recently released its seventh World Happiness Report that features 156 countries ranked by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be. Europe remains the world’s happiest continent, and to no one’s surprise, Sweden (7), Iceland (4), Norway (3), Denmark (2) and Finland (no. 1 again) dominate the top 10 rankings and continue to be super happy countries. According to a study published in ‘Psychiatry Research’, these proud world leaders of happiness may have to make room for southern Europe when it comes to mental well-being. Catalans in Spain scored highest on an internationally recognised mental well-being test. “[W]e found that people living in parts of southern Europe had higher mental well-being than those living in the north,” said study authors Ziggi Ivan Santini, postdoctoral associate, University of Southern Denmark, Sarah Stewart-Brown, Chair of Public Health, University of Warwick, and Vibeke Jenny Koushede, senior researcher, University of Southern Denmark, in an article presenting their findings in the British edition of ‘The Conversation’. Catalonia scored higher on mental well-being than Denmark, Iceland and England. In total, 3 508 Danish men and women aged 16-95 filled out an electronic survey. The researchers analysed their scores to assess how happy they really were. The participants reported how many times they felt loved, useful and cheerful at work, school or home and as citizens on a scale of 1 to 5 in the past 2 weeks. In addition, they completed tests measuring stress, coping strategies, depression, anxiety and pain. Catalonia feeling on top of the world The research team compared their scores to similar data from people in Catalonia, England and Iceland. Results show that Catalans scored higher on the well-being scale than Danes, “challenging the prevailing idea that places in northern Europe are typically happier than those in southern Europe.” Denmark came in second, followed by Iceland and England. Overall, men reported being slightly happier than women. Mental well-being rose with age in all the regions except Catalonia. The researchers argue that the World Happiness Report is strongly influenced by robust economies, and this is a poor indicator of happiness. They also caution that methods rating the Nordic countries as the happiest are too basic. “The ‘happiest place in the world’ label may therefore be misleading, given its rather simplistic focus on life evaluation. As our research shows, using more sophisticated measures of well-being can tell a different story.” The authors’ conclusion gives a lot of food for thought: “There is still plenty to learn about positive mental health and how to promote it, and our results suggest people should not only look to the Nordic countries for guidance. Asking the right questions could enable a better understanding of what drives positive mental health, and how it can be promoted. While reducing poor mental health is necessary to make life bearable, positive mental health makes life worth living.”
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