States ranked by quality of life: Massachusetts is best and New Mexico is worst.
The four best states to live in for quality of life are in New England with Massachusetts leading the list followed by the "News": New Jersey, New Hampshire, and New York. Florida ranks sixth.
The bottom of the list are mostly in the South with the exception of Alaska.
What would you think is the correlation between the quality of life indicators in a state and the mental health of the population of the state? It is interesting that most of us being clinicians we focus on symptoms rather than influential social factors. As Social Workers we are trained to identify social factors that influence public, physical, and mental health, but we rarely recognize and acknowledge them in our clinical discussions. The model of psychotherapy which is known for identifying community factors influencing "local knowledge" of the individual is Narrative Therapy. The Dulwich Center in Australia has pioneered in this work.