Mental illness and mental issues are systemically underdiagnoaed in the third world. I do not believe for a single second that third worlders have better mental health than first worlders. The average third worlders has seen ultra traumatic experiences that simply do not happen to the average first worlder.
I do think that third worlders have better mental health than first worlders with respect to depression.
Different people respond in wildly different ways to hardship and trauma. The difference in outcome between two people is internal, not circumstance. It is impossible that it could be otherwise when you some people have experienced the worst the world has to offer and are relatively happy, while some others have experienced the best and are suicidal.
Furthermore, know that the same people can be depressed or happy despite the same material external circumstances, depending on their outlook.
Depression especially hinges on mental perspective, perspective, and conditioning. It stands to reason that this could vary culturally and geographically for many reasons.
It would be absolutely unethical, but I think you could raise two sets of children to be more depressed or happy with the same material quality of life. Raise one group telling them they are helpless, worthless, and that the world is a terrible place. Tell them that you will give them riches and always disappoint them. Take the other and teach them to have low expectations but enjoy simple pleasures. Equip them with cognitive tools to deal with the challenges of life and disappointment in healthy ways. Do you think you would see a difference between the two groups?
Well the first group you mentioned is borderline abused so of course they would be miserable. The second group is interesting.
> enjoy simple pleasures. Equip them with cognitive tools to deal with the challenges of life and disappointment in healthy ways
is this really fully teachable? Is it something that truly can be trained or it depends on a very complicated number of external and internal factors, including genetics?
as far as this part:
> teach them to have low expectations
Sounds kind of simplistic to say that, but there is always this worry that having low expectations leads to McDonald's, where you may realize that no you actually expected much more out of life, but by that point it's kind of too late and pretty hard to dig yourself out.
I would agree that the first case could be construed as abuse, but this type of abuse is relatively common to some degree.
My point was more to illustrate the fact that cognitive development and personality impact how people experience the world, and is probably the biggest factor in what we consider depression.
The point is to show how trivial it would be to bias humans towards depression and thereby illustrate the importance of the psychological component.
I don't think that you can teach kids in a way that's 100% successful, but I still think it is a huge Factor, probably then the biggest. There's vast amount of data that backs this up.
When it comes to my statement about expectations, it is obviously more nuanced. What I meant is low expectations for how easy life will be in that they will have to overcome challenge and that a happy and successful life requires work. Also low expectations for the material necessity is to have a happy life. I look around today and see lots of peers who think they can't be happy without owning a home. Owning a home is admittedly more difficult now than in the past, but even then something like 40% of people would never be homeowners in their life. If that's a prerequisite for happiness, you have doomed 40% of the population to be unhappy
