The Wall Street Journal reports that the results of University of Southern California assistant professor Alexandra Michel's ten-year long study of "roughly two dozen" entry-level bankers at two anonymous investment banking houses (who participated on the condition that they remain anonymous) will be released later this month in the next issue of Administrative Science Quarterly, with evidence explaining that conclusion.

Not a few, or a majority, but all of the bankers apparently exhibited the aforementioned stress-related ailment within a few years on the job.

If you think camping out in Zuccotti Park is hard, try this on for size:

By the fourth year, however, many bankers were a mess, according to the study. Some were sleep-deprived, blaming their bodies for preventing them from finishing their work. Others developed allergies and substance addictions. Still others were diagnosed with long-term health conditions such as Crohn's disease, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis and thyroid disorders.

Also:

One vice president described work as a never-ending nightmare, waking up every morning and wishing the day before "was just a bad dream." Another vice president said he was so worried others might notice his drinking problem that he would "keep losing half of what they are saying." By the sixth year, the participants, now in their mid-30s, had split into two camps: the 60% who remained "at war" with their bodies, and the remaining 40% who decided to prioritize their health...

And of course:

Some are addicted to prescription drugs like Adderall or Ritalin. To cope, they resort to "depersonalization," a feeling of numbness toward the rest of the world. A few have been suicidal.

Maybe the Occupy movement's next strategy could just be some kind of counter-intuitive mind game encouraging investment bankers to work harder than ever, at which point they'll just sputter out and collapse. Of course, this could easily go the way of Michael Douglas in Falling Down. In which case, please don't color that an endorsement.

Do you know any investment bankers who have lost their minds and their bodies on the job? Do you have any particularly great war stories from those trenches? Are you an investment banker currently in the throes of total, REEEDDRUMMMM-like psychosis? Were you part of the study? If so, we'd love to hear some of your fun anecdotes. Give us a shout!

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

The following, said to be from Mr. Calvo's brother, was forwarded to The Observer from someone with the pseudonym "Anticlimacus Cus" who says he (or she) is a former Princeton graduate student. It has also been posted in the comments section of The Daily Princetonian's web site, where a thread attached to one April 25 article is now 50 pages long.

Statement from Antonio Calvo's family
(Issued by his brother Santiago Calvo, and translated by Flora Thomson-DeVeaux)

The family of Antonio Calvo wishes to thank Antonio's students, colleagues, and friends for all the displays of affection and support that they have received. We are particularly grateful to his students for the events they have organized to honor Antonio, both as a professor and as a person.

The family of Antonio Calvo, like many, is left with doubts about the way Princeton University has acted. They have received no information from Princeton about the reasons for any action with regard to Antonio's employment. The family would like to express its disappointment with the April 25th statement issued by the president of Princeton.

The President's primary concern has been to defend the university's contract-renewal process, without taking into account the human consequences that such a process can have.

Stanford Business School's David Larcker and Anastasia Zakolyukina combed through around 30,000 corporate conference calls to detect patterns that correlate with subsequent restatements of results. The Economist summarizes:

Deceptive bosses, it transpires, tend to make more references to general knowledge ("as you know..."), and refer less to shareholder value (perhaps to minimise the risk of a lawsuit, the authors hypothesise). They also use fewer "non-extreme positive emotion words". That is, instead of describing something as "good", they call it "fantastic". The aim is to "sound more persuasive" while talking horsefeathers.

Other tipoffs: Lying CEOs tend to avoid the first-person singular; they hem and haw less than their truthful counterparts, and they use curse words more often.

(via Freakonomics)