Lithuania is the world’s happiest place for under 30s, but it’s also Europe’s suicide capital

Although the city is steeped in history — some very dark and recent — it feels modern and vibrant.

But when you talk to Gen Zers in Lithuania about its preeminence, the reaction is often the same: disbelief.

A few said it made them laugh.

“I was very surprised, and my friends who are living in Vilnius were also surprised,” said Adriana Doroškevičiūtė, 23, sipping on an iced coffee at a café in the capital.

“I thought we were depressed,” she added. “When we receive the opposite of that, you think, what is happening?”

Richard Bogu, 23, was also shocked.

It’s not that he thinks Lithuania is a bad place for young people; just that, like others, he has come to associate the country with bleakness.

“We are known for being very sad people,” he said, adding: “But, slowly, we’re going toward being a small, happy nation.”

“The changes after the fall of the Soviet Union were very fast and drastic,” he says. Those who lived through this period faced a double trauma: enduring Soviet rule and navigating the chaotic transition to an independent capitalist nation.

Plus, as Grižas points out, psychiatry was sometimes politicized under Soviet rule, with dissidents being labeled as mentally ill, which has strengthened a generational stigma over mental health.

“The Gen Z, haven’t experienced that directly, ” he noted. “So it makes total sense that they have different conditioning and a different mindset.”

Reports like the happiness rankings are also often based on self-assessments, and Grižas suggests that comparisons may play a key part in the variation between the generations.

“The younger generation can easily compare and see the progress that we as a nation made,” he said.

Katelė, the “Gen Z” minister, agrees that the positive self-assessments among the youth may have been influenced by their awareness of the hardships faced by their elders.

While the previous generation was deprived of luxuries, he said Gen Z can relish the freedom to spend the equivalent of $160 on dinner, to vacation abroad, and to participate in democracy.

“If they take a look and think about that,” he said, “it’s just not possible to not be happy.”