Let’s proceed to the list of countries with the highest mental illness rates in the world. Insider Monkey has recently published an arresting article about it. There are different types of mental illness including anxiety disorders, mood disorders (such as depression and bipolar disorder), psychotic disorders (e.g., schizophrenia), eating disorders (anorexia nervous, bulimia nervosa, binge eating), personality disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, etc. Mental illness rates around the world vary, but one of the most common mental illnesses is depression. In the United States, depression affects around 40 million people every year, which is about 18.1% of the population.
Now without a further ado let’s see what Insider Monkey has investigated for us. We have picked three countries with the highest mental illness rates in the world from their list.
The first one is Bangladesh. Just like its neighboring countries, Bangladesh, the number 15 on our list of countries with the highest mental illness rates in the world, has high rates of mental illness although additional research is needed to evaluate the situation in more details. The reported prevalence varies between 6.5% to 31% among adults and 13.4% to 22.9% among children which is a very high rate. National Mental Health survey estimated the rate of 16.05%. One of the problems in this country is that treatment of mental illness is not a priority in Bangladesh and that a lot of people do not receive the treatment they need, partially due to lack of resources and partially because of stigmatization of mental illness. The next county should be Pakistan. Similarly like in India, Pakistanis turn to temples and shrines to get help for mental illness rather than to medical professionals. This is especially common among the poor population since they cannot pay for medical services. Data shows that there are around 50 million Pakistanis suffering from mental illness which is around 10 to 20% of the population and the vast majority is not getting the proper care. There is a large number of children affected by mental illness as well. At last, but not least we are mentioning Spain now. The economic crisis in Spain contributed to an increase in mental illness in the country. 2010 data showed an increase in patients with anxiety, mood disorders and depression which was linked with a mortgage, debt and financial issues. In case of Spain, mental illness rate was higher in men than women.
