- Kenyans scored 88 on the drive and motivation dimension which sought to establish their capacity to start, stick with, and finish everyday tasks as well as strive toward reaching their intended goals.
- Tanzanians were found to be among those with higher social-self scores while countries like the United Kingdom and South Africa had the lowest scores of 50 and 52 respectively.
Image: Star illustrations
The fourth annual report on the Mental State of the World now shows that 23 per cent of Kenyans are distressed and struggling with their mental health.
According to the 2019 Kenya Population and Housing Census by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, the population of Kenyans stood at 47.6 million. Going by the numbers from the Mental health report that means at least 10.9 million(23%) Kenyans are distressed.
The report, published on March 4 by the Global Mind Project, provides data on global trends and insights into the mental health of people with access to the internet.
The report found that the average mental health quotient (MHQ) of Kenyans is 72 with 23 per cent of the population found to be either struggling or distressed.
The Mental Health Quotient (MHQ) is an online, anonymous tool for evaluating mental health and well-being that covers all of the symptoms associated with several mental health conditions.
The MHQ was measured across six dimensions; social self, mood & outlook, adaptability & resilience, drive & motivation, cognition and mind-body connection.
Social self dimension refers to the way people interact with each other and how they view themselves in relation to others. Kenyans were found to have an MHQ of 74 on this dimension.
On mood and outlook, Kenyans were found to have an MHQ of 69. This looked into the capacity to properly control and regulate your emotions as well as have a positive outlook on the future.
The highest score was that for adaptability and resilience where Kenyans were found to have an MHQ of 89 which referred to the ability to cope with setbacks and shift their behaviours and outlook in changing circumstances.
For drive and motivation, Kenyans scored 88 as the dimension sought to establish their capacity to start, stick with, and finish everyday tasks as well as strive toward reaching their intended goals.
The cognition dimension was used to establish the capacity to carry out basic cognitive tasks, make sense of complex situations and sets of events and act and think with a longer-term perspective and Kenyans were found to have an MHQ of 85.
In the report, Tanzanians were found to be among those with higher social-self scores while countries like the United Kingdom and South Africa had the lowest scores of 50 and 52 respectively.
According to the Global Mind Project, only 5 countries saw increases in mental well-being of at least 2% and decreases in mental well-being of at least 2%.
Every year, the wealthier Core English-speaking nations—such as the United Kingdom and Australia—are positioned around the bottom of the list, while the majority of the top-ranked nations are primarily Latin American and African nations, like Tanzania, Nigeria, Venezuela, and the Dominican Republic.