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DoeCommaJohn t1_jd13z7s wrote

Imagine living in freezing temperatures and right next to Russia and still being happy. The Finns must be doing something right

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marhide t1_jd20rhf wrote

It’s called Prozac.

Finland is 11th in the world for per capita antidepressant consumption.

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arimill t1_jd297jt wrote

It's called feeling social pressure to self-report as happy so as to not inconvenience people with your problems

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gstefans t1_jd6zy8r wrote

In terms of actual data, both could still hold, a country could simultaneously appear happy and depressed:

You could have the highest mean and a (relatively) high proportion of depression. But this display only shows the mean, not the extremes or the shape of the distribution.

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marhide t1_jd71tfq wrote

I just think it’s a bit disingenuous to talk about happiest nations and not control for antidepressant consumption, because obviously there’s a deficit of happiness if people are turning to pills.

My feeling is that the happiest people probably live in places that are both prosperous and have a pleasant climate; the little European possessions of the Caribbean are probably a good example.

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gstefans t1_jd7lkhk wrote

Right - If there was a non-pill-based measure of miserability, then there should be a spike in some of the northern countries simply due to lack of sunshine (and vitamin D).

You might still have some of the same countries show high average happiness due to income, public health systems etc etc

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Notabogun t1_jdg34ty wrote

Canadian here, love my winters. We take part in a lot of social winter activities, skiing, curling, snowshoeing and winter camping. We’re all pretty content. We do travel to the sun, for us it’s mostly in May or November when the snow isn’t there to entertain us. Most of the people we know that go to the sun are not that fit or adventurous, that’s just my personal take.

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BananaSoupReddit t1_jd2h77r wrote

In one 2018 poll Finland was also the most racist among EU so... Weird correlation ;D

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