St. Petersburg has come a long way in recent years. Beach Drive's recent renaissance has made downtown a much cooler place — but not quite enough for the editors of Men's Health, who have dubbed St. Pete America's Saddest City in their December issue.
To determine the rankings, the monthly mag calculated suicide rates (courtesy of the CDC) and unemployment rates as of this past June from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They then plugged into the website SimplyMap for the percentage of households in each city that use antidepressants, as well as the number of people who "report feeling the blues all or most of the time."
From the magazine:
If you want record-setting sunshine, St. Petersburg is your city—it once soaked up a Guinness-certified 768 straight days of rays. But there's an asterisk: The people of St. Pete also have the darkest clouds hanging over their heads. We put America on the therapist's couch and discovered that not only is St. Petersburg our Saddest City, but Florida in general seems to be a depressing place to live.
