<p>Not entirely sure what specific stats you'd be interested in, but <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_mental_disorders#Anxiety_disorders" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Wikipedia has plenty on prevalences of specific mental disorders</a>. For anxiety disorders, which include obsessive compulsive disorder:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>A review that pooled surveys in different countries up to 2004 found <strong>overall average prevalence estimates for any anxiety disorder of 10.6%</strong> (in the 12 months prior to assessment) <strong>and 16.6%</strong> (in lifetime prior to assessment), but that <strong>rates for individual disorders varied widely</strong>. Women had generally higher prevalence rates than men, but the magnitude of the difference varied <sup>[(<a href="http://ww1.cpa-apc.org/Publications/Archives/CJP/2006/february/sommers-RP.asp" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Somers, Goldner, Waraich, &amp; Hsu, 2006</a>); emphasis added]</sup>.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>However, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anxiety_disorder#Epidemiology" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Wikipedia's section on epidemiology of anxiety disorders page</a> gives different numbers:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p><strong>Globally</strong> as of 2010 approximately 273 million (<strong>4.5%</strong> of the population) had an anxiety disorder <sup>[(Vos et al., 2013)]</sup>. It is <strong>more common in females (5.2%) than males (2.8%)</strong>. In <strong>Europe, Africa and Asia, lifetime rates</strong> of anxiety disorders are between <strong>9 and 16%</strong>, and yearly rates are between 4 and 7% <sup>[(Simpson, Neria,  &amp; Lewis-Fernández, 2010)]</sup>. In the <strong>United States</strong>, the lifetime prevalence of anxiety disorders is about <strong>29%</strong> <sup>[(<a href="http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/faculty/detels/PH150/Kessler_DSMIV_AGP2009.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Kessler et al., 2005</a>)]</sup> and between 11 and 18% of adults have the condition in a given year. <sup>[Emphasis added.]</sup></p>
</blockquote>

<p>For <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive%E2%80%93compulsive_disorder#Epidemiology" rel="nofollow noreferrer">OCD specifically</a>: </p>

<blockquote>
  <p><strong>OCD occurs in between 1 to 3% of children and adults</strong> <sup>[(Sarvet, 2013)]</sup>. It occurs equally in both sexes...A 2000 study by the World Health Organization found some <strong>variety in prevalence and incidence of OCD around the world</strong>, with figures in Latin America, Africa, and Europe at two to three times those in Asia and Oceania <sup>[(<a href="http://www.who.int/healthinfo/statistics/bod_obsessivecompulsive.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Ayuso-Mateos, 2000</a>); emphasis added]</sup>.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Here's a cool figure of "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_adjustment" rel="nofollow noreferrer">age-standardized</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DALY" rel="nofollow noreferrer">disability-adjusted life year</a> rates from OCD by country (per 100,000 inhabitants)" uploaded to Wikipedia by <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Lokal_Profil" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Lokal_Profil</a> (darker $&gt;$ lighter; click for the scale):</p>

<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Obsessive-compulsive_disorder_world_map_-_DALY_-_WHO2004.svg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ce/Obsessive-compulsive_disorder_world_map_-_DALY_-_WHO2004.svg/800px-Obsessive-compulsive_disorder_world_map_-_DALY_-_WHO2004.svg.png" alt=""></a></p>

<p>"Bad thinking, cognitive distortion, and other strong, dysfunctional personality traits" is a little too vague to work with much further, but here's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_mental_disorders#Personality_disorders" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Wikipedia's info on prevalence of personality disorders</a> in general:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Studies of the prevalence of personality disorders (PDs) have been fewer and smaller-scale, but a broader Norwegian survey found a similar overall prevalence of almost 1 in 7 (<strong>13.4%</strong>), based on meeting personality criteria over the prior five-year period. Rates for specific disorders ranged from 0.8% to 2.8%, with rates differing across countries, and by gender, educational level and other factors <sup>[(Torgersen, Kringlen, &amp; Cramer, 2001)]</sup>. A <strong>US</strong> survey that incidentally screened for personality disorder found an <strong>overall rate of 14.79%</strong> <sup>[(Grant et al., 2004); emphasis added]</sup>.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Finally, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroticism" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><strong>neuroticism</strong></a> is a continuous dimension of individual differences with an approximately normal distribution. As such it is largely defined in terms of degree relative to population norms, and it doesn't make much sense to say "most people are childish and neurotic." (That is, I imagine we'd want to define "childish" in a similar way if we wanted to make any objective statements about population levels.) I'm unaware of any <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_measurement#Ratio_scale" rel="nofollow noreferrer">ratio-scaled</a> measures of neuroticism (and find it hard to imagine any that wouldn't be very controversial), so as an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_measurement#Interval_scale" rel="nofollow noreferrer">interval-scaled</a> construct at best, <strong>there is no meaningful "zero neuroticism"</strong>. Hence, depending on what it means to you, you could either say:</p>

<ol>
<li>"Everyone's a <em>little</em> bit neurotic (at least)!" or, </li>
<li>"$\approx49.\bar{9}\%$ of the population is neurotic, and the same proportion are not."</li>
</ol>

<p>Statement 1 would be Giacobbe's best defense, but that's not saying much – nor does the statement as I've phrased it, though it's an improvement. A better interpretation of his statement (at least, as you've phrased it) would probably be as the subjective opinion, "I find most people to be childish and neurotic [compared to myself, or compared to how I would expect them to act due to other factors, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error" rel="nofollow noreferrer">which I'm probably ignoring</a>]."</p>

<p><strong>References</strong></p>

<p><sup>
- Ayuso-Mateos, J. L. (2000). Global burden of obsessive-compulsive disorder in the year 2000. World Health Organization. Global program on evidence of health policy, global burden of disease. Retrieved from <a href="http://www.who.int/healthinfo/statistics/bod_obsessivecompulsive.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.who.int/healthinfo/statistics/bod_obsessivecompulsive.pdf</a>.<br>
- Grant, B. F., Hasin, D. S., Stinson, F. S., Dawson, D. A., Chou, S. P., Ruan, W., &amp; Pickering, R. P. (2004). Prevalence, correlates, and disability of personality disorders in the United States: Results from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. <em>Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 65</em>(7), 948–958.<br>
- Kessler, R. C., Berglund, P., Demler, O., Jin, R., Merikangas, K. R., &amp; Walters, E. E. (2005). Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. <em>Archives of General Psychiatry, 62</em>(6), 593–602. Retrieved from <a href="http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/faculty/detels/PH150/Kessler_DSMIV_AGP2009.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/faculty/detels/PH150/Kessler_DSMIV_AGP2009.pdf</a>.<br>
- Sarvet, B. (2013). Childhood obsessive-compulsive disorder. <em>Pediatrics in Review, 34</em>(1), 19–28.<br>
- Simpson, H. B., Neria, Y., &amp; Lewis-Fernández, R. (Eds., 2010). <em>Anxiety disorders: Theory, research and clinical perspectives</em>. Cambridge University Press.<br>
- Somers, J. M., Goldner, E. M., Waraich, P., &amp; Hsu, L. (2006). Prevalence and incidence studies of anxiety disorders: A systematic review of the literature. <em>Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 51</em>(2), 100–113. Retrieved from <a href="http://ww1.cpa-apc.org/Publications/Archives/CJP/2006/february/sommers-RP.asp" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://ww1.cpa-apc.org/Publications/Archives/CJP/2006/february/sommers-RP.asp</a>.<br>
- Torgersen, S., Kringlen, E., &amp; Cramer, V. (2001). The prevalence of personality disorders in a community sample. <em>Archives of General Psychiatry, 58</em>(6), 590–596.<br>
- Vos, T., Flaxman, A. D., Naghavi, M., Lozano, R., Michaud, C., Ezzati, M., ... &amp; Brooker, S. (2013). Years lived with disability (YLDs) for 1160 sequelae of 289 diseases and injuries 1990–2010: A systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010. <em>The Lancet, 380</em>(9859), 2163–2196.<br>
</sup></p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-01T17:45:33.380Z
wow.. I'm really enthusiast of your answer.
Revious
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-01T00:06:05.113Z
2014-03-01T00:06:05.113Z
2017-03-10T09:42:37.633Z
Nick Stauner
<p><a href="http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giulio_Cesare_Giacobbe" rel="nofollow">Giulio Cesare Giacobbe</a> is an expert of psychosynthesis. In one of his books (<em>Alla Ricerca delle Coccole Perdute</em>) he speaks of childish, neurotic people. He says most people are childish and neurotic.</p>

<p>Dale Carnegie explains in his book <em>How to Win Friends and Influence People</em> that people are often cocky, narcissistic and so on.</p>

<p>Wayne Dyer writes in his book <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Your_Erroneous_Zones" rel="nofollow"><em>Your Erroneous Zones</em></a> that the instruction system creates distortion and problems in persons.</p>

<p>One statistic described 3.5% of people experiencing psychological dystonic problems (anxiety, OCD, etc.). I would guess that the number or people experiencing bad thinking, cognitive distortion, and other strong, dysfunctional personality traits could be very high. Are there any statistics on that?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-01T07:22:36.333Z
You are interested in prevalence statistics on "bad thinking, cognitive distortion, and other strong, dysfunctional personality traits". I guess the issue is that these don't map that well on to scientific terminology. For example everyone sometimes engages in what might be labelled bad thinking; and everyone sometimes engages in cognitive distortion. Is there a particular trait or disorder that you want prevalence information on?
Jeromy Anglim
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-01T11:28:54.330Z
I will read very carefully the answers. I'm also wondering (but I will open another question) about why woman are more subject to mental problems. I've been making some ipothesis based on mental rigidity (lead to them by education and because of hormones). But in this case some kind of population should suffer more of this problems. The more strict and less adaptive. I.e. religion addicted population, rules addicted, very competitive population. I mean that every population which has strong *doverization* should experiment more psychological disease (in my ipothesis).
Revious
<abnormal-psychology><personality><statistics><bias><anxiety>
Prevalence of psychological "problems"
Revious
# Prevalence of psychological "problems"

(Asked by: username_0 on 2014-02-28)

[Giulio Cesare Giacobbe](http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giulio_Cesare_Giacobbe) is an expert of psychosynthesis. In one of his books (*Alla Ricerca delle Coccole Perdute*) he speaks of childish, neurotic people. He says most people are childish and neurotic.

Dale Carnegie explains in his book *How to Win Friends and Influence People* that people are often cocky, narcissistic and so on.

Wayne Dyer writes in his book [*Your Erroneous Zones*](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Your_Erroneous_Zones) that the instruction system creates distortion and problems in persons.

One statistic described 3.5% of people experiencing psychological dystonic problems (anxiety, OCD, etc.). I would guess that the number or people experiencing bad thinking, cognitive distortion, and other strong, dysfunctional personality traits could be very high. Are there any statistics on that?

**Tags:** abnormal-psychology, personality, statistics, bias, anxiety

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: You are interested in prevalence statistics on "bad thinking, cognitive distortion, and other strong, dysfunctional personality traits". I guess the issue is that these don't map that well on to scientific terminology. For example everyone sometimes engages in what might be labelled bad thinking; and everyone sometimes engages in cognitive distortion. Is there a particular trait or disorder that you want prevalence information on?  
> **username_0**: I will read very carefully the answers. I'm also wondering (but I will open another question) about why woman are more subject to mental problems. I've been making some ipothesis based on mental rigidity (lead to them by education and because of hormones). But in this case some kind of population should suffer more of this problems. The more strict and less adaptive. I.e. religion addicted population, rules addicted, very competitive population. I mean that every population which has strong *doverization* should experiment more psychological disease (in my ipothesis).  

---

## 1 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2014-03-01. Score: 5 | Accepted answer

Not entirely sure what specific stats you'd be interested in, but [Wikipedia has plenty on prevalences of specific mental disorders](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_mental_disorders#Anxiety_disorders). For anxiety disorders, which include obsessive compulsive disorder:

> A review that pooled surveys in different countries up to 2004 found **overall average prevalence estimates for any anxiety disorder of 10.6%** (in the 12 months prior to assessment) **and 16.6%** (in lifetime prior to assessment), but that **rates for individual disorders varied widely**. Women had generally higher prevalence rates than men, but the magnitude of the difference varied [([Somers, Goldner, Waraich, & Hsu, 2006](http://ww1.cpa-apc.org/Publications/Archives/CJP/2006/february/sommers-RP.asp)); emphasis added].

However, [Wikipedia's section on epidemiology of anxiety disorders page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anxiety_disorder#Epidemiology) gives different numbers:

> **Globally** as of 2010 approximately 273 million (**4.5%** of the population) had an anxiety disorder [(Vos et al., 2013)]. It is **more common in females (5.2%) than males (2.8%)**. In **Europe, Africa and Asia, lifetime rates** of anxiety disorders are between **9 and 16%**, and yearly rates are between 4 and 7% [(Simpson, Neria, & Lewis-Fernández, 2010)]. In the **United States**, the lifetime prevalence of anxiety disorders is about **29%** [([Kessler et al., 2005](http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/faculty/detels/PH150/Kessler_DSMIV_AGP2009.pdf))] and between 11 and 18% of adults have the condition in a given year. [Emphasis added.]

For [OCD specifically](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive%E2%80%93compulsive_disorder#Epidemiology):

> **OCD occurs in between 1 to 3% of children and adults** [(Sarvet, 2013)]. It occurs equally in both sexes...A 2000 study by the World Health Organization found some **variety in prevalence and incidence of OCD around the world**, with figures in Latin America, Africa, and Europe at two to three times those in Asia and Oceania [([Ayuso-Mateos, 2000](http://www.who.int/healthinfo/statistics/bod_obsessivecompulsive.pdf)); emphasis added].

Here's a cool figure of "[age-standardized](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_adjustment) [disability-adjusted life year](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DALY) rates from OCD by country (per 100,000 inhabitants)" uploaded to Wikipedia by [Lokal\_Profil](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Lokal_Profil) (darker $>$ lighter; click for the scale):

[![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ce/Obsessive-compulsive_disorder_world_map_-_DALY_-_WHO2004.svg/800px-Obsessive-compulsive_disorder_world_map_-_DALY_-_WHO2004.svg.png)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Obsessive-compulsive_disorder_world_map_-_DALY_-_WHO2004.svg)

"Bad thinking, cognitive distortion, and other strong, dysfunctional personality traits" is a little too vague to work with much further, but here's [Wikipedia's info on prevalence of personality disorders](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_mental_disorders#Personality_disorders) in general:

> Studies of the prevalence of personality disorders (PDs) have been fewer and smaller-scale, but a broader Norwegian survey found a similar overall prevalence of almost 1 in 7 (**13.4%**), based on meeting personality criteria over the prior five-year period. Rates for specific disorders ranged from 0.8% to 2.8%, with rates differing across countries, and by gender, educational level and other factors [(Torgersen, Kringlen, & Cramer, 2001)]. A **US** survey that incidentally screened for personality disorder found an **overall rate of 14.79%** [(Grant et al., 2004); emphasis added].

Finally, [**neuroticism**](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroticism) is a continuous dimension of individual differences with an approximately normal distribution. As such it is largely defined in terms of degree relative to population norms, and it doesn't make much sense to say "most people are childish and neurotic." (That is, I imagine we'd want to define "childish" in a similar way if we wanted to make any objective statements about population levels.) I'm unaware of any [ratio-scaled](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_measurement#Ratio_scale) measures of neuroticism (and find it hard to imagine any that wouldn't be very controversial), so as an [interval-scaled](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_measurement#Interval_scale) construct at best, **there is no meaningful "zero neuroticism"**. Hence, depending on what it means to you, you could either say:

1. "Everyone's a *little* bit neurotic (at least)!" or,
2. "$\approx49.\bar{9}\%$ of the population is neurotic, and the same proportion are not."

Statement 1 would be Giacobbe's best defense, but that's not saying much – nor does the statement as I've phrased it, though it's an improvement. A better interpretation of his statement (at least, as you've phrased it) would probably be as the subjective opinion, "I find most people to be childish and neurotic [compared to myself, or compared to how I would expect them to act due to other factors, [which I'm probably ignoring](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error)]."

**References**

- Ayuso-Mateos, J. L. (2000). Global burden of obsessive-compulsive disorder in the year 2000. World Health Organization. Global program on evidence of health policy, global burden of disease. Retrieved from <http://www.who.int/healthinfo/statistics/bod_obsessivecompulsive.pdf>.  
- Grant, B. F., Hasin, D. S., Stinson, F. S., Dawson, D. A., Chou, S. P., Ruan, W., & Pickering, R. P. (2004). Prevalence, correlates, and disability of personality disorders in the United States: Results from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. *Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 65*(7), 948–958.  
- Kessler, R. C., Berglund, P., Demler, O., Jin, R., Merikangas, K. R., & Walters, E. E. (2005). Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. *Archives of General Psychiatry, 62*(6), 593–602. Retrieved from <http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/faculty/detels/PH150/Kessler_DSMIV_AGP2009.pdf>.  
- Sarvet, B. (2013). Childhood obsessive-compulsive disorder. *Pediatrics in Review, 34*(1), 19–28.  
- Simpson, H. B., Neria, Y., & Lewis-Fernández, R. (Eds., 2010). *Anxiety disorders: Theory, research and clinical perspectives*. Cambridge University Press.  
- Somers, J. M., Goldner, E. M., Waraich, P., & Hsu, L. (2006). Prevalence and incidence studies of anxiety disorders: A systematic review of the literature. *Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 51*(2), 100–113. Retrieved from <http://ww1.cpa-apc.org/Publications/Archives/CJP/2006/february/sommers-RP.asp>.  
- Torgersen, S., Kringlen, E., & Cramer, V. (2001). The prevalence of personality disorders in a community sample. *Archives of General Psychiatry, 58*(6), 590–596.  
- Vos, T., Flaxman, A. D., Naghavi, M., Lozano, R., Michaud, C., Ezzati, M., ... & Brooker, S. (2013). Years lived with disability (YLDs) for 1160 sequelae of 289 diseases and injuries 1990–2010: A systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010. *The Lancet, 380*(9859), 2163–2196.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: wow.. I'm really enthusiast of your answer.  

---

