Last week, more than a few news agencies and blogs picked up the story that “one out of every 10 Wall Street employees is a psychopath.” This immediately caught my attention, because as a researcher, I found the statistic intriguing because it was so out of whack with the incidence of psychopathy in the general population.
But in trying to research where this statistic came from, I stumbled upon a symptom of what’s wrong with a lot of journalism today.
I can summarize the problem in one word — laziness. Many (most?) journalists nowadays take “experts” words for whatever claims they make, without ever bothering to check them out independently.
May is Mental Health Month again, so it’s also a good time to review the mental health statistics behind mental illness. Some of the statistics going around aren’t entirely accurate, because they’re based upon outdated web pages on the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) website. This misinformation is then propagated by well-meaning people and organizations, including NAMI and others. Sadly, the NIMH website is not as accurate or up-to-date as people like to think it is (I think that because it’s a government resource, people just assume it’s accurate and correct).