I live in Russia, but I don't know anybody who diagnosed with depression. This is very uncommon diagnosis. I think that these researchers used invalid data.
Unfortunately, PHP offers very little in terms of modern and agile MVC frameworks.
There are many good MVC frameworks for PHP. Look at Zend Framework (most popular in our region), Kohana, Yii.
That's wrong: many Russian tourists traveling to Thailand still feel uncomfortable about this country. Thailand is known as a country of a thousand smiles. Many Russians love Thailand and I don't hear about feel uncomfortable.