According to Martha Stout, author of The Sociopath Next door, 4% of the population (1 in 25 people) are psycopaths or sociopaths. What is psychopathy or sociopathy? In short, it is the condition of missing conscience.
Dr. Martha Stout states that according to the bible of psychiatric labels, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Discorders IV, the clinical diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder should be considered when an individual possesses at least three of the following characteristics:
- failure to conform to social norms
- deceitfulness, manipulativeness
- impulsivity, failure to plan ahead
- irritability, aggressiveness
- reckless disregard for the safety of self or others
- consistent irresponsibility and
- lack of remorse after having hurt, mistreated or stolen from another person.
I recommend that you read this book “The Sociopath Next Door” by Dr. Martha Stout. It is at least as good as a Robert Ludlum novel but the subject of the book is about the nature of 4% of evil humans among us. And it is important that we have knowledge about this condition and tell our children about it.
- At a 3.4% prevalence rate, anorexia is considered widespread and we often hear about this condition in the popular media.
- At a prevalence rate of 1%, there are few among us who have not heard about schizophrenia and this condition is often a subject in numerous newspaper articles and television programs.
- At a prevalence rate of 0.04%, few adults have not heard about colon cancer.
The bottom line is that there are more sociopaths or psychopaths among us than people who have anorexia, schizophrenia and colon cancer. Truly a must read book.
I credit Laura Rowley for pointing me to this book through one of her articles on Yahoo Finance.
I am a Civil Engineer from Louisiana State University. The compound word, Americaneer, is a combination of the words, American and Engineer.
I became interested in this book, but halfway through i started researching where this 4% number came from. The NIMH lists the number at (a more reasonable I believe) 1%. Now I do not work in a related field, and I am in no way academically equipped to evaluate psychological research, so I have no idea which is true. Still, I thought that you should hear that some very legitimate authorities seem to be using a different number. Her anecdotal experience on the other hand is interesting, powerful, thought provoking, and moving.
Here is that statistic by the way:
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/statistics/1Antisocial.shtml