A study claims that Malaysia is ranked five out of the ten happiest countries in the world.
The Dominican Republic topped the list of the top ten happiest nations according to the Global Mind Project's fourth annual "Mental State of the World" report. Other nations that made the list included Tanzania, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Venezuela, Tanzania, Malaysia, Nigeria, and Uruguay.
The Star reported that an anonymous online survey conducted by the nonprofit neuroscience research organization Sapien Labs surveyed 419,175 people from 71 different nations.
Participants in the survey were assigned a score and positioned on a scale from thriving to troubled based on their responses. The top ten unhappiest nations were also named in the survey, with Uzbekistan at the top and the UK, South Africa, Brazil, Tajikistan, Australia, Egypt, Ireland, Iraq, and Yemen in order of ranking.
Finding a person's Mental Health Quotient (MHQ) is the goal of the survey, which evaluates 47 mental health-related factors in six categories: drive and motivation, mood and outlook, social self, mind-body connection, cognition, adaptation, and resilience.
The study also gathered data on lifestyle, relationships with family and friends, and personal trauma. Participants in the survey were assigned a score and positioned on a scale from thriving to troubled based on their responses.
Tanzania (88), Sri Lanka (89), and the Dominican Republic (91) all scored average MHQ scores out of 300, according to the research. Malaysia had a score of 85%, up 2.9% from the year before.
According to Sapiens Lab, MHQ scores from this year don't differ from those from 2021 and 2022, which saw a significant decline during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The report continued, "This raises important questions about the pandemic's long-term effects and how changes in our lifestyle and work patterns, as well as the amplification of current behaviors like online communication, remote work, eating a lot of processed food, and using single-use plastics, have cumulatively pushed us into a space of poorer mental wellbeing."
Additionally, as reported by Sapiens Lab, the Covid-19 epidemic made mental health declines worse for people under the age of 35. It stated, "As in previous years, wealthier countries of the Core Anglosphere, such as the United Kingdom and Australia, are towards the bottom of the country rankings, while several African and Latin American countries topped the rankings."
The report added, "This pattern suggests that greater wealth and economic development do not necessarily lead to greater mental well-being."
