Continued discussion from here
I posted several polls which showed percentages of people both in America and worldwide who believe in certain phenomenon that is considered delusional by psychiatry…
keeping in mind only 1.1% of the population is SZ…
The ones that stand out most are that 77% of Americans believe aliens have visited earth
72% believe in miracles.
43% of Britons claimed experiences with mind reading.
40% of people in India and China believe aliens live among us disguised as humans. 20% of people worldwide believe this…
23% of Russians believe an alien civilization will contact us in the next 50 years.
I also looked at Intervoice’s website and found
hearing voices in itself is not a symptom of an illness, but is apparent in 2 – 4 % of the population, some research gives higher estimates and even more people (about 8%) have so called “peculiar personal convictions”, that are sometimes called “delusions”, and do so without being ill. Many people who hear voices find them helpful or benevolent (Romme & Escher, 1993).In a large study of 15,000 people it was found that there was a prevalence of 2.3% who had heard voices frequently and this contrasts with the 1% prevalence of schizophrenia (Tien, 1991).
Bentall and Slade (1985) found that as many as 15.4% of a population of 150 male students were prepared to endorse the statement ‘In the past I have had the experience of hearing a person’s voice and then found that no one was there’. They add: ‘…no less that 17.5% of the [subjects] were prepared to score the item “I often hear a voice speaking my thoughts aloud” as “Certainly Applies”. This latter item is usually regarded as a first-rank symptom of schizophrenia …’
http://www.intervoiceonline.org/about-voices/essential-facts
So, while many of these beliefs and experiences are considered delusional or hallucination by the psychiatric community and some schizophrenics, it appears many many people throughout the world experience the same things but somehow have a handle on them and are not considered ‘ill.’
here’s another interesting statistic:
15% of voters think the medical industry and the pharmaceutical industry “invent” new diseases to make money
(page 34)
It just seems a whole lot more people believe in these things than we are led to believe, and we are told these things are not normal, but in fact they are quite popular beliefs in the world…