The global state of mental health: trends and correlates

While mental health issues often hijack public health debates, a comprehensive analysis describing the state of global mental health is missing from the economics literature. This paper uses extensive country-level panel data for 170 countries spanning between 1990 and 2015 and provides new evidence on the trends and correlates of mental health. Contrary to popular belief, the mental health situation has been relatively stable globally and has shown slight improvement since the early 2000s. The improvement applies to male and female populations residing in richer and poorer countries in the world. The analysis of other mental illnesses shows that the state of depression disorders improved, whereas eating disorders, bipolar disorders, and Schizophrenia worsened during the sample period. Notably, the prevalence of drug and alcohol abuse disorders and anxiety disorders did not observe any change. Concerning country-level correlates of mental health, findings show that obesity prevalence is associated with worsened mental health, whereas HDI improves mental health. Interestingly, the country's access to digital technology (internet and mobile usage) and measures such as educational attainment, life expectancy, per capita healthcare spending, and per capita GDP are not associated with overall mental health. Finally, analysis of the gender gap in mental health indicates that mobile subscription rates are associated with reducing the gender gap, whereas obesity prevalence is related to its widening.