A new study – conducted by open-access journal BMC Medicine – of 18 countries worldwide has found that depression rates are highest in high-income countries.
The newly-published research found that the average lifetime prevalence of major depression in the study’s ten high-income countries (which included the U.S., France, New Zealand and Netherlands) was 14.6 percent. In the eight low and middle-income countries (including China, Mexico, India and South Africa), the lifetime prevalence of major depression was only 11.1 percent.
Across countries, surveyors asked the 89,000 respondents questions about their sources of depression, as well as questions about their age, income, marital status and other demographic data.
The one factor that held true across countries was the gender ratio of depression: regardless of nationality, women were twice as likely to have experienced depression than men.
Pinpointing causes of depression around the globe could aid in combating universal afflictions such as suicide and Alzheimer’s disease.