So USA is one of the less depressed places in the world? That's... unexpected.

Depression is such an interesting ailment because of the intense pressure to hide it completely. It's hard to tell what is going on, even when close to a person.  Also, the relative position of the US surprised me too.

"Depression is such an interesting ailment because of the intense pressure to hide it completely. It's hard to tell what is going on, even when close to a person."  That's very insightful.

RE America:  

"Of course, researchers didn't go out and test everyone for clinical depression; rather, they used preexisting data. That means we're not looking at rates of clinical depression, exactly, so much as the rate at which people are diagnosed with clinical depression. People who live in countries with greater awareness of and easier access to mental health services, then, are naturally going to be diagnosed at a higher rate. That may help explain the unusually low rate in Iraq, for example, where public health services are poor. Taboos against mental health disorders may also drive down diagnosis rates, for example in East Asia, artificially lowering the study's measure of clinical depression's prevalence in that region. The paper further cautions that reliable depression surveys don’t even exist for some low-income countries -- a common issue with global studies -- forcing the researchers to come up with their own estimates based on statistical regression models."