Are you happy? Quite, say the Maltese, Very, say the Danes

The Danes have reason to break open the champagne. According to the UN sponsored World Happiness Report 2013, they are the happiest Nation on earth. They are closely followed by Norway, Switzerland and the Netherlands. The report assembled the available international happiness data on how people rate both their emotions and their lives as a whole. Malta ranks 48^th in a list of 156, with Togo bringing up the rear. The report notes that despite the obvious detrimental happiness impacts of the 2007-08 financial crisis, the world has become a slightly happier and more generous place over the past five years. There have been important continental crosscurrents within this broader picture. Improvements in quality of life have been particularly notable in Latin America and the Caribbean, while reductions have been the norm in the regions most affected by the financial crisis, Western Europe and other western industrial countries; or by some combination of financial crisis and political and social instability, as in the Middle East and North Africa. Mental health is the single most important determinant of individual happiness reported in the study (in every case where this has been studied). About 10% of the world’s population suffers from clinical depression or crippling anxiety disorders. They are the biggest single cause of disability and absenteeism, with huge costs in terms of misery and economic waste. Cost-effective treatments exist, but even in advanced  countries only a third of those who need it are in treatment. These treatments produce recovery rates of 50% or more, which mean that the treatments can have low or zero net cost after the savings they generate. Moreover human rights require that treatment should be as available for mental illness as it is for physical illness.