Mental health status of the European population and its determinants: A cross-national comparison study

Abstract

BACKGROUND: This study aimed to provide an up-to-date cross-national comparison of the European population mental health (MH) status and its determinants. METHODS: For the European Union (EU) 27 countries and the UK 6 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in MH status (e.g., prevalence of mental disorders) and 19 KPIs in individual (e.g., smoking), environmental (e.g., air pollution) and socioeconomic (e.g., poor housing conditions) determinants of MH were measured. KPIs scores were standardised in a 1-10 Likert Scale (1: worst performance; 10: best performance), thus allowing between-country comparisons of the relative performance. Exploratory unadjusted bivariate correlations between KPIs-transformed scores were run. RESULTS: Based on the KPIs-transformed scores, Slovakia (8.3), Cyprus (7.8), and Greece (7.1) had the best MH status, while Sweden (3.1), UK (2.6), and The Netherlands (2.1) had the poorest MH status. Regarding determinants of MH Finland (8.0), Sweden, and Estonia (7.5) had the lowest MH risk, while France (3.1) and Romania (2.8) had the highest risk.Smoking (r = -0.43, p = .021), alcohol use (r = 0.57, p = .002), daylight hours (r = 0.74, p