Looking At The Percent of People With Mental Illnesses Associated With A Lack of Empathy

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Previously, I have written a lot of different disorders associated with a lack of empathy and it got us at Mint Message thinking about what percentage of the population exists that lacks the ability to care that much about their fellow man. So, here in this article, I am going to look back at those previous stories and the peer-reviewed studies we looked at to write these stories. Then, I will give a rough guess/estimate of what percent of the population potentially looks at the rest of us as a bunch of playthings to do what they want with instead of fellow human beings.

• According to the Mint Message story about Antisocial Personality Disorder (or ASPD for short), up to 4% of the population (or one in twenty-five people) have ASPD - a mental illness that is characterized by deceitfulness, impulsivity, and remorselessness as well as making sufferers be more likely to commit unlawful and violent acts.
• There is Borderline Personality Disorder or BPD and according to a study, up to 6% of people have this condition. According to another peer-reviewed study, BPD is linked to lower levels of empathy compared to normal people with one of the researchers stating "Our results showed that people with BPD traits had reduced activity in brain regions that support empathy,"
• 6.2% of the population has Narcissistic Personality Disorder or NPD. Lack of empathy and an inflated sense of self-importance are symptoms of this mental illness.
• Histrionic Personality Disorder or HPD is a mental illness associated with shallow emotions that affect 1.8% of the population. It is also the same mental illness shared by Adolf Hitler.
• It is worth noting that there is some crossover since NPD can be diagnosed with ASPD, BPD, and HPD. While not all people with NPD have these disorders, NPD is often part of a dual-diagnosis with other mental illnesses associated with a lack of empathy.