Mental State of the World 2023: Bangladesh's rank improves, UK plummets to second lowest
Bangladesh is also ahead of India and Pakistan in terms of mental wellbeing, the MHQs for which read 59 and 60 respectively
Bangladesh showed improvement in ranking in The Mental State of the World in 2023, while the UK came in as the second worst performer.
According to the survey published on 4 March by the Washington DC-based non-profit Sapien Labs, Bangladesh scored 62, a 200-point scale calibrated to a mean of 100 based on pre-pandemic responses in 2019, on the Mental Health Quotient (MHQ) scale, with 26% of Bangladeshis reporting feeling distressed or struggling.
The country had scored 57.9 in the 2022 survey.
Bangladesh is also ahead of India and Pakistan in terms of mental wellbeing, the MHQs for which read 59 and 60 respectively.
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The UK scored poorly, registering a mere 49 on the MHQ scale, which ranges from -100 (indicating significant dissatisfaction) to 200.
This positioned the UK just above Uzbekistan, the lowest-ranking country, with a notable 35% of Britons reporting feeling distressed.
The previous year, the UK had scored 46.2.
Dominican Republic, Sri Lanka and Tanzania topped the rankings with MHQ scores of 88 or higher.
Brazil, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Uzbekistan are at the bottom of the ranking, with MHQ scores ranging from 48 to 53.
The MHQ is formed in six dimensions: Mood & Outlook, Drive & Motivation, Cognition, Social Self, Mind-Body Connection, and Adaptability and Resilience.
Conducted as part of the research lab's annual survey, which examined over 400,000 individuals across 71 countries, the findings underscore a persistent lack of recovery from the initial mental health impact of the pandemic.
Moreover, it indicates a broader trend of poor mental wellbeing across Europe and North America.
The Mental State of the World report is the annual report of the Global Mind Project, an ongoing, comprehensive survey of the mental wellbeing of the Internet-enabled world.
The MHQ is a functionally relevant metric that can help inform on both the mental wellbeing and the functional capacity of populations.
The objective of the Global Mind Project is to provide an evolving global map of mental wellbeing and enable deep insights into its drivers that can be used for more effective management of population mental wellbeing through evidence-based social policy and interventions.
The year 2023 was the 4th year of the project and consolidated responses from over 500,000 individuals collected during the year across 71 countries.
Mental wellbeing remained at its post-pandemic low with yet again no sign of movement towards pre-pandemic levels. In 2023, at both a global level and at the level of individual countries, MHQ scores remained largely unchanged relative to 2021 and 2022, after a sharp drop during the pandemic years.
This raises important questions about the lasting impact of the pandemic, and how shifts in the way we live and work and the amplification of existing habits (e.g. remote working, online communication, consumption of ultra-processed food, use of single- use plastics) have cumulatively pushed us into a space of poorer mental wellbeing.
Younger generations, particularly those under age 35, saw the steepest declines in mental wellbeing during the Covid-19 pandemic while those over 65 stayed steady. With these declines persisting across all age groups, the pandemic amplified a pre-existing trend of poorer mental wellbeing for younger generations that is now visible across the globe.
As in previous years, several African and Latin American countries topped the country rankings, while wealthier countries of the Core Anglosphere such as the United Kingdom and Australia are towards the bottom. This pattern suggests that greater wealth and economic development do not necessarily lead to greater mental wellbeing.
In 2023, data from the Global Mind Project identified key factors that explain these patterns, such as getting a smartphone at a young age, frequently eating ultra-processed food and a fraying of friendships and family relationships, that are typically more prevalent in Internet-enabled populations of wealthier countries.
Overall, the insights in this report paint a worrying picture of our post-pandemic prospects and we urgently need to better understand the drivers of our collective mental wellbeing such that we can align our ambitions and goals with the genuine prosperity of human beings.
Although respondents were similarly recruited across all countries, two key caveats must be highlighted.
First, these samples may not reflect a true sample of any country's population and will be biased by those with language proficiency, Internet access and the willingness to spend 15 minutes completing an online assessment. Thus, results must be interpreted strictly in this context. Second, cultural differences in language usage and culture itself can significantly influence how people interpret and respond to each individual question.
Any individual country's results will therefore reflect these differential effects of culture.
