Nora Hansson Bittár

Since the late 2000s, concern about rising mental illbeing has grown across high-income countries. Over the same period, news coverage has become more negative and online illbeing searches more frequent. In this study we examine to what extent these three patterns are related. We combine three monthly Swedish time series for January 2010 to September 2025 (189 months in all): the negativity of news headlines, the volume of illbeing-related searches, and newly started spells of sickness absence certified for a mental health diagnosis. We test three expectations: that media negativity is followed by illbeing-related search activity, that search activity is followed by entry into sickness absence, and that media negativity is followed by sickness absence directly. All three series rise over the period. Each association holds when last month's value of one series is used to predict this month's value of the next, and each holds when the outcome's own previous month is added to the model. However, none of the associations survives first differencing. Taken together, the results give tentative evidence of a consistent long-term temporal ordering across the three domains, in which media negativity is followed by illbeing-related search, and illbeing-related search by entry into sickness absence.

Sweden consistently ranks among the world’s happiest nations in global surveys. However, such rankings—typically focused on one single life evaluation indicator—may obscure important differences across life domains and population subgroups. Using nationally representative data from 15,068 Swedish adults in the Global Flourishing Study (GFS), this article offers a multidimensional assessment of human flourishing in Sweden across seven domains: psychological wellbeing, purpose and meaning, character and virtue, psychological distress, physical health, social wellbeing, and financial wellbeing. Swedish respondents, on average, reported high levels of life evaluation and financial wellbeing, and low psychological distress, positioning Sweden favorably among the 22 GFS countries. However, comparatively lower scores were observed in purpose and meaning and character and virtue. When comparing population subgroups, a pronounced age gradient emerged, with older Swedes reporting higher wellbeing across nearly all domains compared to younger adults, and many indicators showing medium to large effect sizes (e.g., Cohen’s ds = 0.77 and 0.70 for loneliness and happiness, respectively). Gender and immigration-related differences indicated somewhat lower levels of flourishing among women and foreign-born individuals. The effect sizes were, however, relatively small (e.g., ds at 0.21 in traumatic distress and 0.22 in anxiety for gender and immigration, respectively). These findings highlight Sweden’s strengths in supporting wellbeing and flourishing later in life while also pointing to disparities, particularly among younger adults, but also women and foreign-born populations. The results underscore the value of a multidimensional flourishing framework that moves beyond life evaluations and national averages to identify wellbeing inequalities between sociodemographic groups, even in a country routinely ranked among the world’s happiest. Copyright belongs to the author(s)