RELATIONS BETWEEN MENTAL DISEASES, PER CAPITA INCOME AND SOME SOCIO-ECONOMIC VARIABLES: RESEARCHES ON BRICS-T COUNTRIES

Abstract

Mental illnesses are one of the great social problems of the last period. Mental diseases, which are an important public health problem in the changing and developing world, can be considered as an output of the economic development process. From this point of view, the relationship between mental diseases, which is one of the outputs of the economic development process, and some socioeconomic variables in the BRICS-T countries, which have an important place in the world economy, has been investigated in the study. In this study, the effects of variables representing the level of income per capita and education, health, democracy, and income distribution on mental diseases for the period 1990-2019 were investigated with the help of the Kuznets model. Firstly, descriptive statistics, heteroscedasticity, autocorrelation, and cross-section dependency tests were applied. Secondly, GLS and Driscoll-Kraay estimation tests used in the estimation process, and it was determined that there was a U-shaped relationship between mental illnesses and per capita income in the BRICS-T country group. Konya causality test applied to determine the causality relationships between the variables. According to the results, it has been determined that there are some unidirectional and bidirectional causality relationships both in some country groups and between some variables.