Economic Conditions and Mental Health in Thailand

Abstract

BackgroundThere is a continual rise in the number of people suffered from mental disorder around the world. Several factors are believed to be connected to the development of mental disorders. Apart from health factors, mental disorders could also be caused by the economic and social factors associated with the patients. However, none of the existing literature has provided the analysis by taking into account all the possible causes together. This paper attempts to fill this gap in the literature by ascertaining the relationship between economic and social factors in relation to mental disorders.MethodsUsing the number of mental disorder cases in all 77 provinces in Thailand during the period 2015 to 2017, this paper uses either a fixed effects or a random effects model, depending on the results of the Hausman test, to analyse the effect of economic and social factors on the number of mental disorder cases in Thailand.ResultsGenerally, we found that better economic situations, as measured by higher GPP per capita, higher employment rates and lower household debt, help reduce mental disorder rates, while social factors such as greater health service accessibility and lower technology accessibility also reduce the number of mental disorder cases. However, death and divorce rates are not consistent in their effect on mental disorder rates, their impact seeming to depend on what type of mental disorder is being considered. ConclusionsWhen considering different types of disorders, we found that they could be affected by each of these factors in different ways.