> I can't imagine a raving lunatic would do better, on average, in a big city in a poor country than they would in a similarly big city in a rich country Is th

> I can't imagine a raving lunatic would do better, on average, in a big city in a poor country than they would in a similarly big city in a rich country Is this anything but an argument from failure of imagination? As a neutral observer, it seems more likely that the director of the WHO's mental health unit is informed about the experiences of the mentally ill across the globe than your hunches are. My hunch about statistics is that your feeling about statistics is rooted in unsupported beliefs about your society as opposed to facts. I think the implication is that some places (Ethiopia or Sri Lanka) are more open in what constitutes "a bit odd" versus "deranged" than others (US or UK), and that this greatly impacts outcome once you account for general conditions of living (ie, only talking about big cities). > I can't imagine a raving lunatic would do better Notice how you jumped to an extreme to make your point -- raving lunatics are unlikely to do well anywhere so there is unlikely to be much variation in the outcome for them, you are correct. But what does the distribution look like? The median? The mode? etc. The vast majority of schizophrenics aren't raving lunatics -- though they are very susceptible to how they're interacted with by society. I'm inclined to believe that when discussing the distribution of outcomes, the expected outcome on average is better where the WHO director believes it is.