Our World
in Data
Oxford Martin School logoUniversity of Oxford logoGlobal Change Data Lab logo
Data

How do people deal with anxiety or depression?

See all data and research on:
Mental Health
Configure the data
How do people deal with anxiety or depression?

Interactive visualization requires JavaScript.

What you should know about this indicator

  • Respondents were first asked whether they had 'felt so anxious or depressed that they could not continue their regular daily activities as they normally would for two weeks or longer'. Those who replied "yes" were then asked about different approaches to dealing with this anxiety or depression.
  • Answers from demographic groups with fewer than 100 participants were left out of this data.
  • This data comes from the Wellcome Global Monitor 2020, a survey that Wellcome ran with Gallup. It asked about views and experiences of mental health in 113 countries and territories.
Source
Wellcome and Gallup (2021) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
April 19, 2023
Date range
2020–2020
Unit
%

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Wellcome and Gallup – Wellcome Global Monitor 2020 – Mental health

Wellcome conducted the first Global Monitor – the largest-ever study of public attitudes to science and health – in 2018. The first wave covered topics such as whether people trust science, scientists and information about health, and attitudes towards the safety and efficacy of vaccines – a focus which has since proved incredibly forward-thinking.

In 2020, the Global Monitor's central focus was science's role in mental health.

The datasets and crosstabs cover the mental health sections of the WGM Survey 2020 conducted in 113 countries and territories worldwide on mental health views and experiences. The rest of the survey data will be published in subsequent data releases.

Relevant links:

Note 1: Data for answers where the demographic group had less than 100 participants are filtered out.

Note 2: Empty answers have been filtered out. Empty answers may appear because the question was not applicable to the respondent or the respondent did not answer the question.

Retrieved on
April 18, 2023
Retrieved from
https://wellcome.org/reports/wellcome-global-monitor-mental-health/2020
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Wellcome, The Gallup Organization Ltd. (2021). Wellcome Global Monitor 2020 – Mental health.

Wellcome conducted the first Global Monitor – the largest-ever study of public attitudes to science and health – in 2018. The first wave covered topics such as whether people trust science, scientists and information about health, and attitudes towards the safety and efficacy of vaccines – a focus which has since proved incredibly forward-thinking.

In 2020, the Global Monitor's central focus was science's role in mental health.

The datasets and crosstabs cover the mental health sections of the WGM Survey 2020 conducted in 113 countries and territories worldwide on mental health views and experiences. The rest of the survey data will be published in subsequent data releases.

Relevant links:

Note 1: Data for answers where the demographic group had less than 100 participants are filtered out.

Note 2: Empty answers have been filtered out. Empty answers may appear because the question was not applicable to the respondent or the respondent did not answer the question.

Retrieved on
April 18, 2023
Retrieved from
https://wellcome.org/reports/wellcome-global-monitor-mental-health/2020
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Wellcome, The Gallup Organization Ltd. (2021). Wellcome Global Monitor 2020 – Mental health.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Dealt with anxiety or depression by taking prescribed medication”, part of the following publication: Saloni Dattani, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, Hannah Ritchie, and Max Roser (2023) - “Mental Health”. Data adapted from Wellcome and Gallup. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261027-123016/grapher/ways-of-dealing-with-anxiety-depression.html [online resource] (archived on October 27, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Wellcome and Gallup (2021) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Wellcome and Gallup (2021) – processed by Our World in Data. “Dealt with anxiety or depression by taking prescribed medication” [dataset]. Wellcome and Gallup, “Wellcome Global Monitor 2020 – Mental health” [original data]. Retrieved October 27, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261027-123016/grapher/ways-of-dealing-with-anxiety-depression.html (archived on October 27, 2026).

Download

Quick download

Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.

Download full data

Includes all entities and time points

Download displayed data

Includes only the entities and time points currently visible in the chart

Data API

Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.

Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ways-of-dealing-with-anxiety-depression.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false&approach=engaged_in_religious_or_spiritual_activities
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ways-of-dealing-with-anxiety-depression.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false&approach=engaged_in_religious_or_spiritual_activities

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ways-of-dealing-with-anxiety-depression.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false&approach=engaged_in_religious_or_spiritual_activities")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ways-of-dealing-with-anxiety-depression.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false&approach=engaged_in_religious_or_spiritual_activities", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ways-of-dealing-with-anxiety-depression.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false&approach=engaged_in_religious_or_spiritual_activities").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ways-of-dealing-with-anxiety-depression.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false&approach=engaged_in_religious_or_spiritual_activities")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ways-of-dealing-with-anxiety-depression.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false&approach=engaged_in_religious_or_spiritual_activities")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ways-of-dealing-with-anxiety-depression.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false&approach=engaged_in_religious_or_spiritual_activities", encoding("utf-8") clear