Happy, happy West

[nairiporter]

Share of population with mental health and substance use disorders, 2016

Share of population with any mental health or substance use disorder; this includes depression, anxiety, bipolar, eating disorders, alcohol or drug use disorders, and schizophrenia.Due to the widespread under-diagnosis, these estimates use a combination of sources, including medical and national records, epidemiological data, survey data, andmeta-regression models.

Source: http://ow.ly/ln2430msjvE

Comments

[notasupervillain]

I always wonder the extent to which this is a diagnosis-driven difference rather than an illness-driven one. Years ago, I read an article about a Western doctor who was practicing somewhere in the developing world (I forget the exact country), and had a woman come with the exact symptoms of postpartum depression. He wrote initially thinking that it must be something else because he thought postpartum depression was a Western thing. But he prescribed her antidepressants, and she got better...

It would make sense to me that I'm situations where people can't access treatment for mental illness, they don't get diagnosed either. And that's much of the developing world.