Hungarians: saddest people in Europe?

Hungarians appear towards the bottom of a happiness-sadness scale
calculated for 19 European countries, but Budapest residents say they just “disguise their happiness well”.

Hungarians have long had a reputation as being the gloomiest nation in Europe. They are renowned for their pessimism, and depression is a nationwide problem.

So the findings of a recent survey by pollster Tarki showing Hungarians among the saddest nations in Europe came as no great surprise. According to the ten-level scale completed by 34,000 people, only the Russians and Bulgarians are less happy than the Hungarians.

With a score of 10 being the happiest, the 1,500 Hungarians who filled out the form averaged 6.4 points, well below the European average of 7.21 points. The Danes and Swiss came out as the happiest with 8.33 and 8.11 points respectively.

According to the Tarki survey, the Hungarian mood has even deteriorated since the last such survey in 2005.

Hungary’s leading behavioral psychology research team has found similar results in its research of 6,000 people between 2002 and 2006. It found that clinical depression rose from 13% to 18%, meaning that every fifth Hungarian is seriously depressed. It also found that social trust has greatly diminished in the past few years, one of the factors that contributed to the feeling of unhappiness.

“People feel that they do not have personal goals, they do not have standards in their lives to abide by, they see their future blank and hopeless. And it’s also telling that the proportion of those saying that people do not care about what happens to others rose from 50% to 80%,” psychologist Maria Kopp said.

Other factors that play a part in the amount of unhappiness are the rate of divorce, unemployment, civil society, satisfaction with the government, and religion. Kopp said the level of unhappiness and depression was particularly high among men.

“Interestingly, they feel more intensely that there are no common social goals and values in which they could trust. Civil organizations are not strong enough so the defense functions of society are not working properly. And they feel that their lives have no goal and meaning which plays an important part in the high death rate of men. Interestingly, this wasn’t so in the case of women,” she said.

Many Hungarians, however, insist that they are not really gloomy, let alone pessimistic, just simply realist. Some said the Hungarian gloom is just a myth.

“People show their unhappiness when they express themselves publicly and they complain how badly they live, how oppressed they are and so on. But it’s not true,” Budapest resident Annamaria said. Another resident, Jozsef Komocsin said that deep down Hungarians aren’t really that unhappy. “Most people believe in happiness, we just disguise it well,” he said.

Hungarians, Hungarian people 2008, Maria Kopp, survey, depression