It's less happy in the Philippines, 2013 UN World Happiness Report says

"More fun" does not necessarily mean happier people, as the Philippines once again ranked low on the United Nations' 2013 World Happiness Report.

 

Despite its tourism campaign "It's More Fun in the Philippines," the country was among the less happy, or 92nd out of 156 countries surveyed worldwide. 

 

The top 10 happiest nations were Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Netherlands, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Austria, Iceland, and Australia.

 

In 2012, the Philippines was ranked 103rd out of 155 countries. 

 

The rankings were based on data from the Gallup World Poll, which gathered respondents' measures of positive emotions, negative emotions, and evaluations of life as a whole.

 

The three main life evaluations are the Cantril ladder of life, life satisfaction, and happiness with life as a whole. The Cantril ladder is a a well-being assessment developed by social researcher Dr. Hadley Cantril.

 

In 2012, Gallup revealed that the Philippines was the most emotional society in the world. 

Depressed
 

While the survey included a range of emotions, from worry to enjoyment, Filipinos as the most emotional people was not a positive thing.

 

In fact, WHO data shows there are 4.5 million depressed Filipinos, the highest incidence of depression in Southeast Asia. Only one-third of depressed people in the country seek professional help, DOH Assistant Secretary Paulyn Jean Rosell-Ubial was quoted in a previous report. 

 

Dr. Randy Dellosa, a psychiatrist, said the main problem is that people have a difficult time detecting depression in the Philippines. "People confuse depression for normal sadness," he said in a previous report. 
 

Depression and anxiety disorders are the most common forms of mental illness, which is one of the main causes of unhappiness, as stated in the 2013 World Happiness Report. 

 

"For, as the first World Happiness Report showed, people can be unhappy for many reasons— from poverty to unemployment to family breakdown to physical illness. But in any particular society, chronic mental illness is a highly influential cause of misery," the report said in a chapter on mentall illness and unhappiness by Richard Layard, Dan Chisholm, Vikram Patel, and Shekhar Saxena.

 

Despite the costs of mental illness, such as lost production and extra physical healthcare, governments around the world spend very little on mental healthcare. "No government spends more than 15 percent of its health budget on mental healthcare... the underspend is particularly large in low-income countries," the authors said.

 

In the Philippines, seeking help for depression is difficult, as treatment is expensive and there are few psychiatrists compared to the number of depressed people. 

 

Non-profit organizations contribute their efforts to help address this. One such mental health advocacy group is the Natasha Goulbourn Foundation, which launched "Hopeline," the country's first suicide hotline last year. 

 

As emphasized in the 2013 World Happiness Report, "better treatment for mental health would improve happiness directly; and improving happiness in other ways would reduce the frequency of mental illness."

 

"If we want a happier world, we need a completely new deal on mental health," the report said. —KG, GMA News