By Moses Mwaniki
“If we want a happier world, we need a completely new deal
on mental illness,” these are the words in a report by Columbia University’s
Earth Institute on 23rd March.
Kenya has scooped the second position in Africa as the happiest
state with Rwanda being the second happiest country in Africa. Sudan is the
least happy nation.
According to the report, “the world has become a slightly
happier and a nice place over the past five years,” the report continued to
state that the economic and political upheavals have resulted in greatly
reduced levels of well-being for some nations.
Globally, Denmark was ranked as the happiest nation with
Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden following it in that order.
Kenya ranked position 33 globally while the top Africa’s happiest state Rwanda is
position 15.
According to the report, the single factor that reduces
happiness levels is a reduction in people’s perceived “freedom to make key life
choices.”
Reduced levels of corruption also contributes to a rise in
the level of national happiness. The report urged governments that seek to
improve the happiness of their citizens to spend a larger portion of their
health budgets on mental illness which is the single biggest determinant of
misery in all the countries assessed.
The report’s also points out that, “It is important to
balance economic measures of societal progress with measures of subjective
well-being to ensure that economic progress leads to broad improvements across
life domains not just economic capacity.”
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