Lake County Ohio Weal

  STATISTA: Russia, U.S. Are High Per Capita Polluters by  Anna Fleck,   Oct 25, 2024 Of the world’s top emissions producers, Russia and the United States emit the highest per capita emissions. According to data from the UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2024, Russia produced 19 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tC02e) per person in 2023, closely followed by the U.S. with 18 tCO2e. China produced nearly half that at 11 tCO2e per capita. When looking at total emissions, then China was the biggest single-country emitter of GHGs in 2023 at 16,000 MtCO2e, accounting for 30 percent of global emissions. This is up 5.2 percent from 2022. The U.S. is the second biggest emitter at 5,970 MtCO2e in total, having accounted for 11 percent of the global total last year (-1.4 percent since 2022). India, in third place, accounted for eight percent of the global total at 4,410 MtCO2e (+6.1 percent from 2022). As this chart shows, GHG emissions across the G20 members increased by 1.8 percent be...

  STATISTA: The Key to Happiness by Anna Fleck,  Oct 18, 2024 In the United States, having a job or career that you enjoy is considered a key cornerstone for leading a fulfilling life. According to a survey by Pew Research Center, 71 percent of respondents said that having a job or career that they like is either extremely or very important to feeling satisfied with their lot.  The next most popular perceived element for a fulfilling life was having close friends, with 61 percent of respondents picking the option.  Having children, a lot of money or getting married were less highly rated. In the case of having children, 42 percent of respondents said it was not important, while 44 percent said marriage was not important. Women were slightly more likely than men to say that their job or career is important to achieving a feeling of fulfillment, at 74 percent compared to their counterparts’ 69 percent.  Men were slightly more likely to say having children (29 perc...

  One Year to Mourn: Should grief be considered a Medical Disorder? In March 2022, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) announced a revision to its widely influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The revised manual, known as DSM-5-TR, included a new diagnostic category: prolonged grief disorder (PGD). The announcement ignited a firestorm of controversy. “Pathologising grief is an insult to the dignity of loving relationships—it proclaims grievers as mentally ill and will too often result in the careless prescription of antidepressants or other drugs to treat enduring symptoms, without consideration of the context.” So wrote the authors of a short and scathing article in the medical journal The Lancet Psychiatry, As scholars collaborating on a volume about grief that brings together theoretical reflections on grief with the actual experiences of grieving individuals, we think it is useful to ask whether grief should be conceptualized as a mental disor...

  STATISTA: Agriculture's Major Impact Upon the Planet by  Anna Fleck,   Oct 15, 2024 Over the centuries, agriculture has transformed the face of our planet. According to figures published by WWF in its “Living Planet 2024” report, around 40 percent of all habitable land is now used for agricultural purposes, of which around 70 percent is used for livestock grazing alone. It is estimated that over 80 percent of the world's agricultural land is used to feed livestock. On a global scale, the impact of agriculture on the environment weighs heavily. Food production is the main cause of the destruction of terrestrial habitats, leading to the loss of biodiversity worldwide. It is estimated that 90 percent of tropical deforestation results from the conversion of forests to farmland, and that as a result, over 80 percent of threatened terrestrial bird and mammal species are threatened by habitat loss due to agricultural activities. In addition, agriculture is by far the largest c...

  STATISTA: Radio Isn't Dead by  Anna Fleck,   Aug 20, 2024 Radio appears to have done a better job than TV at holding its own in the face of subscription services - at least, for now . Data from the IFPI Engaging With Music 2023 report shows that the medium remains popular around the world across all surveyed age groups. While the youngest age category of 16-24 year olds had the lowest share of respondents saying that they had a strong engagement with radio in 2023, the figure was still 59 percent. This rises with age, reaching 78 percent of respondents saying the same in the 55-64 year old category. This popularity is largely driven by a love of music. Of the 43,000 internet users interviewed across 26 countries, 63 percent said that without music, they would not listen to the radio. 85 percent of radio listeners said that if that were the case, they would then seek music elsewhere, most often through subscription streaming services. A key reason for radio maintaining ...

STATISTA: Has Obesity in the U.S. Peaked?   by Felix Richter, Oct 11, 2024 After decades of rising obesity rates in the United States, the country may have turned a corner in its fight against the condition that increases the risk of hypertension, type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease. According to the latest results from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), the prevalence of obesity among U.S. adults aged 20 and older was 40.3 percent during the August 2021 – August 2023 survey period, down from 41.9 percent between 2017 and 2020, which marked the highest prevalence ever recorded. According to historical data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, adult obesity prevalence climbed from 13 percent in 1960-1962 to 23 percent between 1988 and 1994 and first reached 30 percent in the 1999-2000 wave of the national survey. Aside from two small dents, the prevalence of obesity has continued to climb from there, reaching 41.9 percent in the la...

  STATISTA: U.S. Depression Rate Reaches New High In 2023 by Anna Fleck,  Sep 9, 2024 According to survey data, three in ten people in the United States had been clinically diagnosed with depression at a point in their lives in 2023. This is the highest rate since the question started being asked, up 10.6 percentage points from 2015. The rate of increase was particularly steep in the first year of the pandemic, jumping up from 22.9 percent in 2020 to 28.6 percent in 2021. Meanwhile, 17.8 percent of respondents said that they currently had depression in 2023. These averages hide figures even more extreme, as Gallup data reveals how rates among women, young adults, as well as Black and Hispanic respondents have risen particularly fast. According to the survey, 36.7 percent of women report having been diagnosed with depression in their lifetimes versus 20.4 percent of men. For young people aged 18-29, 34.3 percent had been diagnosed with depression, while for 30-44 year olds it...

  STATISTA: Mental Health and Social Media: What Message Prevails? by  Anna Fleck,   Aug 11, 2023 Mental health is a topic never far from the minds of girls as young as 11-15 years old in the United States, according to a recent study by Common Sense Media, an online parental guidance platform. In real life, nearly seven in ten girls reported having had exposure to helpful mental health content and information in real life each month. But on the flip side, just under half (45 percent) said they heard or saw harmful content about suicide or self harm while just under four in ten (38 percent) said the same of harmful content on eating disorders. Social media, in many ways an extension of daily life, appears to have the same contradiction. As the following chart shows, girls aged 11-15 years old face a high risk of exposure to harmful content on social media in the United States, including on the topics of suicide, self-harm and eating disorders. The report found that girls ...

  STATISTA: Mental Illness: Cost is a Major Barrier to Treatment by Martin Armstrong, Oct 10, 2023 October 10 marks World Mental Health Day, with the theme in 2023 being 'mental health is a universal human right'. As described by the WHO, this means: "Everyone, whoever and wherever they are, has a right to the highest attainable standard of mental health. This includes the right to be protected from mental health risks, the right to available, accessible, acceptable, and good quality care, and the right to liberty, independence and inclusion in the community. In the United States though, for example, a Mental Health America study indicates that this is still far from the case. There, 42% of adults with a mental illness whose treatment needs went unmet in 2022 said that this occurred because they simply couldn't afford it. Also of concern, 27% said they didn't know where to go to get the support services they needed and 17 percent said that, despite having health in...

  STATISTA; Mental Health Issues in the United States b y Felix Richter,  Apr 30, 2024 Having long been stigmatized as a sign of weakness, mental health problems have become much less of a taboo in recent years.  The pandemic, with its unique set of challenges, accelerated that trend, as it not only caused a spike in symptoms of anxiety or depression, but also led to more people opening up about their problems.  In a recent Statista survey, 3 in 4 American adults reported that they have struggled with mental health in some form or other in the 12 months preceding the survey, making an open discourse about mental health issues all the more important. According to the findings from Statista Consumer Insights, 52 and 49 percent of U.S. adults have experienced stress or anxiety in the past year, respectively, up from 46 and 38 percent in 2019. 29 percent of respondents reported having felt loneliness or social isolation in the past year, while 34 percent stated that the...