Demographic variation in symptoms of depression and anxiety across 22 Global Flourishing Study countries

We know relatively little about how mental health varies across countries around the world or among demographic groups in diverse nations and cultures.

The current study addresses these issues by analyzing symptoms of depression and anxiety using data from the Global Flourishing Study (GFS), an international, nationally-representative survey of 202,898 individuals from 22 geographically, economically, and culturally diverse countries collected in 2022-2023.

Here we show that proportions of individuals with substantial symptoms of depression range from 0.14 in Poland to 0.50 in the Philippines. These two countries report the lowest and highest substantial symptoms of anxiety as well (0.13 and 0.48, respectively). Lower-income, non-Western countries tend to have higher proportions of both outcomes compared with higher-income, predominantly Western nations. Symptoms of depression and anxiety also vary across age, gender, marital status, education, employment status, religious service attendance, and immigration status in one or more countries. The results of random effects meta-analyses show that several demographic factors are significant predictors of both outcome variables when the results for all 22 countries are pooled.

While being mindful of varying cultural contexts and possible translation and interpretive issues with the survey questions, the results suggest substantial variations in symptoms of both depression and anxiety across nations and key demographic groups. This work lays the foundation for future longitudinal GFS studies of mental health from a cross-national and global perspective.