Thoughts ?

45 comments
  1. Ireland could be the least depressed because all our depressed people are waiting 18 months for their first psych appointment

  2. I thought some of those Scandinavian countries are among the happiest in the world – wasn’t Denmark voted happiest place to live only recently?

  3. The way they do those is they ask people how they are. So obviously Irish people are gonna tell a stranger with a clipboard “I’m grand, nothing to complain about”

  4. This isn’t real is it? I thought we were one the highest? Between the chronic vitamin d deficiency alcoholism and lack of mental health services this seems incorrect to me.

  5. Waiting close to a year for any mental professionalism and getting some useless psychologist who doesn’t want to be there would definitely skew the results.

  6. Call me crazy, but I’m just a little dubious that the data from AmazingMaps.shop has any correlation with real-world data whatsoever.

  7. People who aren’t depressed are probably afraid to say they’re in good form because everyone on here seems to be depressed and they don’t want to come across as being a dick.

  8. Wouldn’t believe it for a second. There’s an epidemic of suicide in this country with young people (mostly).

  9. Complete rubbish I think. Maybe they’re mistaking Irish melancholy with happiness. We aren’t well known for being open about our true feelings anyway.

  10. This is not to offend anyone’s beliefs or ideals but it has been consistently recurring to me for quite some time that those in 3rd world dirt poor countries can be happy with very simple things and we in the 1st world countries with everything at our fingertips are sitting there in despair. I’m starting to think it’s their faith that keeps them more mentally & spiritually intact whereas we in the 1st world (with all our 1st world intelligence and much weaker faith) are more mentally & spiritually fragile. Researching more into this as I type…

  11. I wonder sometimes about the Irish. Theres a lot of shame in Ireland still about mental health, about negative feelings, anything dark, anything taboo. We compartmentalise ourselves so much, how we feel, who we present to the world and what we dont, that I honestly think we actually think up a lot of our happiness when in fact we are perhaps somewhat less so. Its a cultural expectation to put on a happy face here.

    Ive mentioned in other posts that having lived abroad theres more an integrated dimension to ppl where negative things are acknowledged, heard, recognised and are more open in society. Ive seen ppl cry in company, sober, and without shame. They were respected, comforted, treated kindly and not as weak, stupid or embarrassing. All topics, be they dark and personal, were welcomed and received with a lot of respect and care, on both genders side.

    I remember when I was young you simply were never allowed to feel down, off, bored, ungrateful. Never. Id have gotten a smack for it. Turns out that Id always suffered depression but Id never known it. Much like when homosexuality was a dark taboo, many ppl who were gay actually would have termed themselves “confused”, they didnt actually know how they felt because it was shameful and taboo to feel such. This detachment from a real thing makes whats real more unreal, unrecognisable thereby unnamed. If it doesnt have name then its existence is dubious if even there at all.

    Still, I do think Irish are more inclined to be cheerful but by default its causes ppl who arent cheerful to doubt themselves, to take on that persona and again deny a reality about themselves, to the point where, like I once did in my youth, consider myself cheerful despite everything.

    We are a culture where we were indoctrinated to ‘be happy with what you got’. This kind of indoctrination had its place and enabled ppl to carry on but it also caused a blindness in ppl where denial was part of living.

    Our capacity to keep a charm and humour, a genetic dependence on alcohol as relief and a simplistic world view has very much helped us keep the dogs at bay.

  12. I am Irish and I live in Finland. According to this I have the perfect balance?

    On a side note, did Finland not win happiest country in the world. Again?

  13. As Freud said: “the Irish are a mass of contradictions and impervious to the rational thought processes that might resolve them”. I think that explains the map.

Leave a Reply