Britain is one of the worst countries in the world for personal wellbeing, a report has shown.

The Global Flourishing Study questioned more than 200,000 people from 22 countries to find out which nations were doing the best in areas such as relationships, health, financial security, happiness and purpose.

The results put the UK third from bottom, with people reporting low levels of optimism, freedom, purpose and physical health. Only Turkey and Japan were worse.

Researchers were surprised to see that Indonesia topped the table for ?flourishing?, followed by Mexico and the Philippines.

Previous surveys have tended to find that richer countries report being generally happier, but the new research, which looked at a wider range of indicators, showed the opposite.

?We see a negative relationship between GDP and meaning in life,? said Dr Tyler VanderWeele, professor of epidemiology at Harvard University.

?One of the big surprises from the data, and one we?ll continue to unpack, was that the ordering of countries was not necessarily what we had anticipated.

?It turns out that while the richer, developed countries reported higher on financial security and life evaluation, they don?t report high on meaning, relationships or prosocial [positive, helpful] character.?

Those surveyed were asked questions such as ?how satisfied you are with life as a whole these days?; ?how would you rate your overall mental health? and ?how often do you worry about safety, food or housing?.

Britain scored 6.88 out of 10, compared to Indonesia, which averaged a score of 8.47.

Connection between wellbeing and religiosity

The team found ?one of the most consistent results? was that people participating in religious communities ? such as regularly attending a church, synagogue or mosque ? reported higher levels of wellbeing.

Those who attend a religious service more than weekly scored nearly one point higher on a scale of 0 to 10, compared to those who never attend (7.7 compared with 6.9).

Even just attending church services as a child also had a protective effect on wellbeing that lasted into adulthood, a trait which could help explain why religious middle-income countries scored higher than secular high-income countries.

Dr VanderWeele added: ?We find that childhood religious service attendance in just about every country predicts higher levels of adult flourishing.?

Likewise, growing older generally improved wellbeing across the board, with over-70s in Britain scoring 7.31 out of 10 for flourishing, compared to just 6.59 for those aged 18 to 29.

The age pattern held true for all countries except Poland and Tanzania, which saw wellbeing decrease with age.

Previous studies have tended to show that younger people display a slight gain in wellbeing, which dips down in middle age ? as the pressures of work and parenting take their toll ? before rising again.

However experts said they were concerned that the youth bounce had largely vanished, a finding which may indicate that younger people across the world now feel worse off than they were in previous generations.

Most countries did not see a substantial difference in flourishing across sexes, although the researchers found that men flourish more than women in Brazil, whereas women flourish more than men in Japan.

?Trade-offs? in rich countries

Byron Johnson, professor of social sciences at Baylor University, said: ?We are following over 200,000 people around the world in over 40 different languages and the six inhabited continents and this gives a voice to 64 per cent of the world?s population and we?re very proud of that.?

Researchers said that the results could have real-world implications for governments, particularly those trying to improve their economies.

Brendan Case, associate director of Harvard Human Flourishing Programme said: ?Indonesia is viewed as an example of how to get stuck, how to stagnate economically as your neighbours prosper.

?Japan is much wealthier per capita, with Japanese citizens living longer, and although those matter, it?s interesting to consider that the Global Flourishing Study raises some questions about the potential trade-offs involved in that process.

?It seems plausible to wonder whether Japan?s particularly rapid economic transformation came at a very high cost in many areas of flourishing.?

The research was published in the Nature Mental Health journal. (The Telegraph)

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