When Happiness and Depression Meet

About a year ago I wrote about happiness and what it is that makes us happy. It turns out that what makes us happy, what motivates us, follows the philosophy of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. We do things for ourselves that help grow us and are important to us, we do things that we have to struggle with to improve ourselves, and we do things that make us part of a bigger world, and all of these three things have the capacity to make us happy or happier.

http://appliedpsychologyresearch.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/happiness-is-synthetic-so-why-not.html

I wanted today to check, basically, how users of Google search for information associated with happiness and depression. This is essentially search volume index over time. As you can see above there is a fascinating convergence between these two search volumes. As the search volume for Depression decreases over time, the search volume for Happiness has increased to almost the same volume matching Depression. Even when you ask Google to extrapolate these trends (in dotted lines) the trend continues.

Is depression is an illness of affluence

A recent research study published in the July 2011 edition of BMC Medicine the researchers explain that major depression is one of the leading causes of disability worldwide, yet epidemiologic data are not available for many countries. This is particularly true in low to middle-income countries. The study presents data on the prevalence, as well as impairment and demographic correlates of depression from 18 high and low to middle-income countries.

The research outcome seems to be that people living in wealthier nations are more likely to have experienced a depressive episode than those in low and middle-income countries.

Nearly 15% of those living in the 10 rich nations reported having at least one depressive episode in their lifetime. For poorer countries, the prevalence of a depressive episode was only 11% The two most depressed countries are France, with a 21% prevalence, and the U.S., with a 19% prevalence.

According to the researchers the cross-national divide in depression levels might be due to the sharp income inequality in wealthy nations. Another possible reason is the low level of awareness about mental illness in poorer countries. Or, say the researchers, it could be perhaps just be that depression is an illness of affluence.

The graphics is an attempt to contrast Google search volume by region against those countries with the highest prevalence of a depressive episode.