Why does the US have twice as many Psycopths as the UK?

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dianthus
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13 Jan 2012, 12:15 am

Colonial America was settled largely by convicts and debtors England wanted to be rid of.



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13 Jan 2012, 1:15 am

OliveOilMom wrote:
Maybe ours are just diagnosed more than those in the UK.


I'm going to use Occam's razor and go with this.


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DJFester
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13 Jan 2012, 1:19 am

My guess would be cultural differences, one example being how uptight US culture is about sex and nudity compared to the UK, and another example being how much more violence and guns exist in US culture compared to the UK... things like that.


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13 Jan 2012, 2:09 am

Another interesting thing that gets diagnosed much more in the US vs elsewhere is Dissociative Identity Disorder. The US has, among the population of mentally ill, about a 10% rate of it, vs Germany .9%, China .4%, Turkey 14%.



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13 Jan 2012, 2:12 am

Verdandi wrote:
Ravenclawgurl wrote:
maybe because the us has more than twice as many people in total?


That shouldn't make a difference in overall rate. If you have 1:200 people with a condition in one country, and 1:100 people with that same condition in another country, simple population numbers cannot account for the discrepancy.


Hmmm... the UK has 58M people, the US about 319M - I think maybe sample size may be an issue in this particular instance. Method and frequency of diagnosis may be an issue as well. We have alot of unregulated dxing going on in the US so people can get access to prescription drugs. Basically, with a corporation run healthcare system, I'm not sure you can trust any statistic coming out of the US.



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13 Jan 2012, 2:41 am

draelynn wrote:
Verdandi wrote:
Ravenclawgurl wrote:
maybe because the us has more than twice as many people in total?


That shouldn't make a difference in overall rate. If you have 1:200 people with a condition in one country, and 1:100 people with that same condition in another country, simple population numbers cannot account for the discrepancy.


Hmmm... the UK has 58M people, the US about 319M - I think maybe sample size may be an issue in this particular instance. Method and frequency of diagnosis may be an issue as well. We have alot of unregulated dxing going on in the US so people can get access to prescription drugs. Basically, with a corporation run healthcare system, I'm not sure you can trust any statistic coming out of the US.


Relative population sizes shouldn't make a difference. Statistically speaking, there is no reason that psychopathy should be twice as common in the US as the UK. The larger population alone would account for more psychopathy in the US.

Method and frequency of diagnosis probably makes more of a difference. While I have been misdiagnosed in the past, however, I don't think that it's necessarily accurate to disregard statistical data from the US. After all, the US and the UK both came up with the same prevalence for ASDs in separate studies.



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13 Jan 2012, 2:44 am

Also, while prescription medications are a huge profit for pharmaceutical companies, I doubt that a significant number of diagnoses are related to selling those medications. Also again, there are no medications for psychopathy, just as there are none for autism, so even with a bias toward overdiagnosis to sell drugs, it would be extremely unlikely to show up with this.



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13 Jan 2012, 3:17 am

Verdandi wrote:
JesseCat wrote:
U.S. culture encourages psychopathic and narcissistic traits. Most C.E.O.'s of large companies would fit the bill of Hare's psychopathy checklist. Psychopaths don't exist in a vacuum. They may have a genetic predisposition but their environment nurtures their antisocial tendencies.
If you're interested in that kind of thing try reading "The Sociopath Next Door" or "The Psychopath Test".


I don't really believe this is true. I've seen how selective people can be with their "empathy" and capacity for compassion, and I would be unsurprised if most CEOs are only effectively psychopathic in specific contexts, just as many people are.


a college psych prof from decades back, told me that a subset of sociopaths were "disocial" in that they had compassion or empathy only for their own clan or ilk.



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13 Jan 2012, 3:42 am

RobotGreenAlien2 wrote:
Looking up Pscyopathy I noticed the US rate is about 1:100 and the UK rate is about 1:200. Any idea why.


Not sure if you used the percentages quoted in Wiki, but if so, both studies cited there, on psychopathy were conducted, in part, by Hare, the individual that created the psychopathy checklist.

The 1 percent statistic quoted for the US, and the .6 percent quoted for the UK, were derived from different statistical methodology, so one can't reliably compare those two results, as indicative that the prevalence of psychopathy in the US is significantly greater than than that of the prevalence in the US.

The newer study done in the UK, in 2009, was identified as the first study of it's kind in the abstract of that study.

There would have to be quite a few studies replicated using the same statistical methodology to seriously consider if there is an actual difference between countries.

I saw a recent study from Switzerland that indicated that Stock Traders exhibited higher levels of psychopathy as compared to a control group of "normal" individual, and another group of actual diagnosed institutionalized psychopaths, so it appears to depend on the circumstance of what is considered normative in culture.

Technically the traders would not likely be diagnosed with psychopathy or antisocial personality disorder, because that behavior in that subculture is considered normal behavior.

Within the criminal subculture, what we consider as outside of what is accepted in the normative culture, is considered normative in that culture, also.

In the TV Show the Soprano's his psychotherapist identified Tony as a psychopathic individual, so his psychotherapist dropped him as a canidate that could be helped by that therapy. Meanwhile Soprano went home and expressed a caring attitude for the ducks in his swimming pool, showing that he was capable of experiencing empathy and likely had a conscious, at least when it came to ducks. It's just a TV show, but it shows the difficulty in diagnosing true psychopaths.

Per strict definition of the true psychopath, they are not capable of actually feeling empathy, or remorse, period.

Most politicians, traders, CEO's, violent criminals would likely feel some remorse, if they accidentally ran over the family dog by accident; that sets them and the character Tony Soprano apart from the true psychopath, that is documented as existing in society, through thorough clinical observation.

The screening tests for psychopathy, used in actual research indicates a strong disposition for psychopathy in some individuals, but determining whether or not an individual is actually not capable of feeling remorse, or empathy, can be a bit harder to determine, than using a screening test. Hopefully, that is less than one percent of all populations.

I really doubt there is much of a difference in the percentage of true psychopaths in the US and the UK, and I'm not sure how we could really reliably measure that difference if it exists.

The horrible behaviors that "normal" human beings can determine as culturally acceptable, within their own cultures, can be much more terrifying than the resulting behavior of a true psychopath.

A good example is female genital mutilation, and honor killings. This is mainstream acceptable stuff in some cultures. The behavior of stock traders appears to be relatively innocous, in comparison, to these other behaviors widely accepted in some other cultures.

Collective cultural beliefs, and killing tools invented as byproducts of some cultures, appear to be more dangerous, than any innate or socially derived characteristic, specific to any individual human being.

Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and the Holocaust, as horrible as all these events may have been for many, were considered normative behavior within those cultures of origin at the time the events took place. And, in the US, the generation that accepted Nagasaki and Hiroshima as normative behavior, is considered by some as the greatest generation.

Some still suggest it would have been a more appropriate response, to 9/11. Fortunately for those innocent individuals in the middle east, somewhat cooler heads prevailed.

The bottom line is millions of completely innocent human beings were killed, by other human beings.

Depending on the context, what is determined right and what is wrong behavior, and what is social and what is anti-social behavior has no limits, as evidenced by history, when it comes to collective human behavior otherwise known as culture.

Depending on the circumstance it appears, that most human beings, can compartmentalize psychopathic behavior, when it comes to restricting empathy and remorse. If it's accepted as the norm of culture, almost anything goes.

And if one opposes that norm, no matter how cruel that norm can be seen on a human flesh and blood basis, they can be seen as the anti-social one.

The cultural norm, is a potential psychopath, that may not have an equal, seen on many worlds, that exist in the Universe.



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13 Jan 2012, 3:59 am

auntblabby wrote:
Verdandi wrote:
JesseCat wrote:
U.S. culture encourages psychopathic and narcissistic traits. Most C.E.O.'s of large companies would fit the bill of Hare's psychopathy checklist. Psychopaths don't exist in a vacuum. They may have a genetic predisposition but their environment nurtures their antisocial tendencies.
If you're interested in that kind of thing try reading "The Sociopath Next Door" or "The Psychopath Test".


I don't really believe this is true. I've seen how selective people can be with their "empathy" and capacity for compassion, and I would be unsurprised if most CEOs are only effectively psychopathic in specific contexts, just as many people are.


a college psych prof from decades back, told me that a subset of sociopaths were "disocial" in that they had compassion or empathy only for their own clan or ilk.


This makes sense but an awful lot of people at least talk like this, whether or not it's actually true.



fraac
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13 Jan 2012, 4:31 am

aghogday wrote:
The horrible behaviors that "normal" human beings can determine as culturally acceptable, within their own cultures, can be much more terrifying than the resulting behavior of a true psychopath.


Yes. I've known psychopaths and mostly they work by schoolgirl gameplaying. They don't even have menace in their eyes, they look totally empty (seriously, check it out - a psychopath doing their 'psycho stare' feels, to me as an autistic, far less dangerous than eye contact with a normal person with a head full of demons). True believer followers are far more dangerous than any psychopath.



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13 Jan 2012, 6:51 am

The USA is much bigger and has more people, and so more chance of a higher population group of psychopaths, perhaps? I'm just guessing, probably not the right answer.


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13 Jan 2012, 6:58 am

DJFester wrote:
My guess would be cultural differences, one example being how uptight US culture is about sex and nudity compared to the UK


Have you spent time in the UK? We're not as uptight as Americans but we're certainly not as liberal as Europeans either. Sex is often not properly talked about and is often considered to be something to laugh at in a sort of silly schoolboy way. I wouldn't say we're that much more liberal on nudity either - again, in England it's considered to be more something to laugh at... unless we find it sexually attractive, then we leer. I would continue this discussion but the UK is not nearly as liberal as you'd think, especially with regard to porn. The establishment's views on these are often less much less liberal than many members of the public but, still, we're not that sexually open as a society.



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13 Jan 2012, 7:04 am

RobotGreenAlien2 wrote:
Looking up Pscyopathy I noticed the US rate is about 1:100 and the UK rate is about 1:200. Any idea why.


Source?

aghogday's post sounds a lot more credible.



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13 Jan 2012, 8:04 am

aghogday wrote:
RobotGreenAlien2 wrote:
Looking up Pscyopathy I noticed the US rate is about 1:100 and the UK rate is about 1:200. Any idea why.


The horrible behaviors that "normal" human beings can determine as culturally acceptable, within their own cultures, can be much more terrifying than the resulting behavior of a true psychopath.

A good example is female genital mutilation, and honor killings. This is mainstream acceptable stuff in some cultures. The behavior of stock traders appears to be relatively innocous, in comparison, to these other behaviors widely accepted in some other cultures.

Collective cultural beliefs, and killing tools invented as byproducts of some cultures, appear to be more dangerous, than any innate or socially derived characteristic, specific to any individual human being.

Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and the Holocaust, as horrible as all these events may have been for many, were considered normative behavior within those cultures of origin at the time the events took place. And, in the US, the generation that accepted Nagasaki and Hiroshima as normative behavior, is considered by some as the greatest generation.

Some still suggest it would have been a more appropriate response, to 9/11. Fortunately for those innocent individuals in the middle east, somewhat cooler heads prevailed.

The bottom line is millions of completely innocent human beings were killed, by other human beings.

Depending on the context, what is determined right and what is wrong behavior, and what is social and what is anti-social behavior has no limits, as evidenced by history, when it comes to collective human behavior otherwise known as culture.

Depending on the circumstance it appears, that most human beings, can compartmentalize psychopathic behavior, when it comes to restricting empathy and remorse. If it's accepted as the norm of culture, almost anything goes.

And if one opposes that norm, no matter how cruel that norm can be seen on a human flesh and blood basis, they can be seen as the anti-social one.

The cultural norm, is a potential psychopath, that may not have an equal, seen on many worlds, that exist in the Universe.


I think knowing something's accepted in your society must take some of the sting out of it, although if you're blamed as well as mutilated or whatever, you get an extra 'sting' at the same time.

Ofcourse, the reason why we never hear about *male* genital mutilation is because jews - who hold our purse-strings more (not less) than ever before - do it. That's not an antisemitic comment, just what looks like a statement of fact; correct me if I'm wrong.

Don't forget there's always some rationale behind unpleasant cultural practices that makes them work for that society.



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13 Jan 2012, 8:15 am

(Thread moved from Autism discussion to PPR)


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