It’s been a difficult few years for many Brits, with Covid and the cost-of-living crisis making life in this country rather gloomy and uninspiring.
A new study, conducted by a not-for-profit neuroscience research body called Sapien Labs, has revealed that the United Kingdom ranks as the second ‘most miserable’ place to live on the planet.
The research was carried out as part of the annual Global Mind Project, an organisation that seeks to track and understand this evolving relationship to inform the future health and wellbeing of society.
Since 2019, the group have claimed that there has been a global decline in mental-wellbeing, saying that the past few years have seen ‘no sign of recovery’.
Out of the 71 countries studied, the UK ranked 70th for overall mental wellbeing.
People from all 71 countries included were asked to complete an online questionnaire known as the Mental Health Quotient (MHQ), which assessed their overall happiness and resilience in six areas.
From that, people were placed on a scale from -100 to 200, with the upper end being very satisfied.
Great Britain earned a score of 49 on the scale, which is comparatively low when you consider the average global score was 65.
So, which country was ranked the most miserable place to live in the world?
That accolade went to Uzbekistan, but not by much as they scored just one fewer point than the UK did.
The report found that UK mental wellbeing levels in 2023 had not recovered from pre-pandemic levels, and that 35 per cent of respondents in this country said they were struggling with their wellbeing.
Interestingly, the report has found that the wealthier a country is year on year, the lower it tends to score.
The happiest places in the world, the Dominican Republic, Sri Lanka and Tanzania, are all non-English speaking developing countries and are typically not known for their wealth and abundance.
In fact, Europe and North America did pretty poorly as continents in general.
Whilst wellbeing for those over 65 has remained steady, 18-24-year olds across eight English-speaking countries’ mental health has shown the least improvement since 2020.
Furthermore, the study found that eating extra-processed goods results in much worse mental wellbeing across all age groups.
Yemen scored better than the UK, Ireland, and Australia, scoring 59 for mental wellbeing – even though its 21.6 million population t currently requires humanitarian assistance.
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