Welcome to the Mad in America Podcast, your source for science, psychiatry, and social justice.

Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Mad in America podcast. I'm Amy Biancoly, staff writer, and our guest today is Tara Theagharajan,

founder and chief scientist of Sapien Labs, a non-profit organization that runs the Mental Health

Million Project and its annual Mental State of the World Report, which uses an online survey that

tracks mental well-being

among internet-enabled populations around the world.

The 2021 report just published was the project's second annual effort,

and it was authored by Thara Garajan

and lead scientist Jennifer Newsom,

it surveyed more than 233,000 internet users

in 34 countries.

The overall objective, write the authors,

is to quote, provide an evolving global map

of mental well-being and enable deep insights

into its drivers.

So it has some fascinating results with considerable implications regarding mental health

and the factors that contribute to it, and I'm really grateful to you for joining us today.

So just to hop into the results, what's particularly notable, what pops out is that Venezuela actually topped out the list of 34 countries for its aggregate score of mental well-being. And at the bottom, it was English-speaking countries. 30% reported themselves as distressed and struggling. Could you speak to that a bit?

Like, why? What are the contributing factors and ramifications? Well, first of all, thank you so

much, you know, for the opportunity to be here and talk about this. So with that question,

you know, when we saw Venezuela at the top of the list, we were extremely surprised because it's absolutely not what you would expect.

And, you know, our first reaction was, you know, that can't be right.

...