The Mental Health Million project of Sapien Labs issued its second report, published online March 15, encompassing 34 countries and over 220,000 Internet-enabled adults. It found a continued decline in mental health in all age groups and genders, with English-speaking countries having the lowest mental well-being.
The decline was significantly correlated with the stringency of COVID-19 lockdown measures in each country and was directionally correlated to the cases and deaths per million.
Dr. Tara Thiagarajan
The youngest age group (18-24 years) reported the poorest mental well-being, with better mental health scores rising in every successively older age group.
“Some of our findings, especially regarding mental health in young adults, are alarming,” Tara Thiagarajan, PhD, Sapien Labs founder and chief scientist, told this news organization.
“Our data, which are continually updated in real time, are freely available for nonprofit, noncommercial use and research, and we hope that researchers will get involved in an interdisciplinary way that spans sociology, economics, psychiatry, and other fields,” she said.
Pioneering research
Dr. Thiagarajan and her team pioneered the Mental Health Million project, an ongoing research initiative utilizing a “free and anonymous assessment tool,” the Mental Health Quotient (MHQ), which “encompasses a comprehensive view of our emotional, social, and cognitive function and capability.”
The MHQ consists of 47 “elements of mental well-being,” with scores ranging from –100 to +200. (Negative scores indicate poorer mental well-being.) The MHQ categorizes respondents as “clinical, at-risk, enduring, managing, succeeding, and thriving” and computes scores on the basis of six broad dimensions of mental health: core cognition, complex cognition, mood and outlook, drive and motivation, social self, and mind-body connection.
As reported by this news organization, Sapien Lab’s first Mental Health State of the World report (n = 49,000 adults) was conducted in eight English-speaking countries in 2020. Participants were compared to a smaller sample of people from the same countries polled in 2019.
In this year’s report, “we expanded quite substantially,” Dr. Thiagarajan said. The project added Spanish, French, and Arabic and recruited participants from 34 countries on six continents (n = 223,087) via advertising on Google and Facebook.
Economic prosperity not protective
Across the eight English-speaking countries, there was a decline in mental well-being of 3% from 2020 to 2021, which was smaller than the 8% decline from 2019 to 2020. The percentage of people who were “distressed or struggling” increased from 26% to 30% in 2021.
“Now that a lot of pandemic issue seems to be easing up, I hope we’ll see mental well-being coming back up, but at least it’s a smaller decline than we saw between 2019 and 2020,” said Dr. Thiagarajan.
The decline across countries from 2019 to 2021 was significantly correlated with the stringency of governmental COVID-19-related measures (based on the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, 2022; r = .54) and directionally correlated to the cases and deaths per million.
In total, 30% of respondents in English-speaking countries had mental well-being scores in the “distressed” or “struggling” range – higher than the Middle Eastern countries, North Africa, Latin America, and Europe (23%, 23%, 24%, and 18%, respectively).
Only 36% of participants in the English-speaking countries, the Middle East, and North Africa reported “thriving or succeeding,” vs. 45% and 46% in Latin America and Europe, respectively. Venezuela topped the list with an average MHQ of 91, while the United Kingdom and South Africa had the lowest scores, at 46 each.
Mental well-being was slightly higher in males than in females but was dramatically lower in nonbinary/third-gender respondents. In fact, those identifying as nonbinary/third gender had the lowest mental well-being of any group.
Across all countries and languages, higher education was associated with better mental well-being. Employment was also associated with superior mental well-being, compared with being unemployed – particularly in core English-speaking countries.
However, “country indicators of economic prosperity were negatively correlated with mental well-being, particularly for young adults and males, belying the commonly held belief that national economic prosperity translates into greater mental well-being,” said Dr. Thiagarajan.