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> In all of Google, I'm certain that there are at least thirty (1 in ~3500) mentally ill employees Just curious about this statistics. Is 1 in ~3500 the preval

> In all of Google, I'm certain that there are at least thirty (1 in ~3500) mentally ill employees Just curious about this statistics. Is 1 in ~3500 the prevalence of mental illnesses in the general population? If so, why would you assume that this frequency would remain the same in a leading tech company which selects its employees through a rigorous (one would hope) interview process, which might significantly skew the sample? It may be much lower than in the general population. Or, alternatively, much higher.

rendall 6y ago
> Is 1 in ~3500 the prevalence of mental illnesses in the general population? No. It's much, much higher. 20% of American adults suffer from some form of mental illness at any given moment. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness.shtml https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness.sh... It's not reasonable to assume that mental illness = delusions of persecution, of course, but it is reasonable in my opinion to expect that at least one person in the ~120K people at Google mistakenly believe they are being persecuted for their race when they are not, and I think it's not reasonable to assume there is only one, given today's climate. If it's a slow news day, journalists seek out the mentally ill - say, those who believe that the world will end on some specific day or those who believe their blood is full of spiders - and make a story out of it. I believe this happened with this story. Whatever personnel problems Google has, harboring closet racists is not it. Google HR reasonably and compassionately tells some people who are over-stressed about racism in their lives to take a medical leave - and BBC / NBC spins this into a story about Google harboring racists, which exacerbates the initial mental health issue. It's reprehensible, and BBC should be ashamed. NBC News should be too, but they are shameless and it's too much to ask.

rendall 6y ago

> Is 1 in ~3500 the prevalence of mental illnesses in the general population? No. It's much, much higher. 20% of American adults suffer from some form of mental illness at any given moment. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness.shtml https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness.sh... It's not reasonable to assume that mental illness = delusions of persecution, of course, but it is reasonable in my opinion to expect that at least one person in the ~120K people at Google mistakenly believe they are being persecuted for their race when they are not, and I think it's not reasonable to assume there is only one, given today's climate. If it's a slow news day, journalists seek out the mentally ill - say, those who believe that the world will end on some specific day or those who believe their blood is full of spiders - and make a story out of it. I believe this happened with this story. Whatever personnel problems Google has, harboring closet racists is not it. Google HR reasonably and compassionately tells some people who are over-stressed about racism in their lives to take a medical leave - and BBC / NBC spins this into a story about Google harboring racists, which exacerbates the initial mental health issue. It's reprehensible, and BBC should be ashamed. NBC News should be too, but they are shameless and it's too much to ask.